


Show Me Your Teeth

by Cards_Slash



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Blood and Injury, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:06:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 49,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: Doc and Robert are two of the most unlikely wolves in existence.  One of them was born without a pack and one of them walked out on his.  They run into one another by accident, and they slowly figure out that they might not be able to separate ever again.or,Wolves weren’t meant to be solitary creatures but they were so rare that anyone who left an established pack (or had been born outside of it) had no option but making do with the life they were given.  It didn’t matter how much effort he put into trying to make Wyatt into something like a proper packmate, he was always going to be human.This wolf didn’t smell like anyone he recognized.  It didn’t smell like the nearest pack either.  That meant it was exactly like him, some man out there doing his best mortal impression.  He was fitting in with the other people, acting like he’d never clenched his jaw just to snap bones to lick out the marrow.  As if it wasn’t half-consumed with the sort of hunger that no amount of indulgence could sate.
Relationships: Bobo Del Rey | Robert Svane/Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday/Bobo Del Rey | Robert Svane
Comments: 17
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

It was an indisputable fact that some things were simply _better_ naked. Now, maybe there had been a time in his life when the notion of stripping off his clothes outside after dark had felt _strange_ to him but he could not recall it. There was nothing on this green earth that was as freeing as those first few moments when the silvery moonlight spread across his naked skin. That glorious chill that set right some sense of wrongness that grew on him like mold when he’d spent too long wrapped up in the trappings of humanity.

Doc liked his human body; he liked his human life.

But he _craved_ this moment, that long stretch of his body reacting to an undeniable need. The almost blissful sensation of being _changed_ into something primal and perfect. The moonlight was as welcome streaming through his wolf-fur as it had been on his human-skin. Some nights, when the ground was cool and the moon was full, he thought he could just lay and soak in the simple joy of it.

Doc was too often seduced by the dirt under his paws; by the sounds of living things all around him. The rapid beat of rabbit feet and the smell of _delicious_ things that he could eat. The wolf was always ravenous like any creature that spent so long waiting to be set free might be. Doc saw no need to hold that hunger back when giving in gave him such a thrill. 

He always tucked his human clothes away in a satchel left somewhere out of the way, but he very rarely had any intention of coming back to them with any hurry.

\--

Doc had gone looking for something to eat, but he found a hollow in the ground that smelled too _familiar_ and too _inviting_ to be food. It was just the right size to contain the arch of a wolf’s back if he’d been having a little snooze in the forest. The dirt under his paws was still warm where the other wolf’s body had been pressed into the leaves. 

It smelled like his fur: something wild and unnatural. 

Even if Doc had been _capable_ of something like reservation he wouldn’t have stopped himself from rolling into the lingering scent. The leaves and the dirt felt good in his fur as he ground his body against the scent to soak it all up. It had been years and _years_ since he’d been this close to anything else that was made like he was. 

Wolves weren’t meant to be solitary creatures but they were so rare that anyone who left an established pack (or had been born outside of it) had no option but making do with the life they were given. It didn’t matter how much effort he put into trying to make Wyatt into something like a proper packmate, he was always going to be _human_. 

This wolf didn’t smell like anyone he recognized. It didn’t smell like the nearest pack either. That meant it was _exactly_ like him, some man out there doing his best mortal impression. He was fitting in with the other people, acting like he’d never clenched his jaw just to snap bones to lick out the marrow. As if it wasn’t half-consumed with the sort of hunger that no amount of indulgence could sate. 

If the ground was still warm, that meant the wolf had to be _close_.

\-- 

The hunt had led him in a spiral, starting from that warm hollow and going in circles wider and wider until he found himself at the very edge of the forest. As dark as it was, the air had gone cool but his aching lungs turned his breath hot as fire. His wolf body had been built to withstand extremes that his human skin could barely tolerate but there was still a limit to how long he could run without collapsing.

Doc could have gotten back up; he could have kept moving. His overheated limbs were tired but they weren’t giving out. He wasn’t giving up necessarily, but giving in to the realization that the other wolf had been playing a masterful game. 

There he stood in the distance: looking like every monster ever written about in children’s stories. He was as dark as the night around them with the fur around his neck and shoulders so thick it was like a lion’s mane. He wasn’t panting for breath, but looking across the space between them with a cautious tilt of his head. While Doc wasn’t _small_ for a wolf, he wasn’t quite as big as this stranger gently sniffing the air to catch his scent. 

Wolf language hadn’t evolved in such a way that it allowed for proper articulation of human thoughts. Wolf language had an immediacy in it, made up of noises that were sharp and _loud_ and often only used the way humans used guns and screams. But, Doc howled at the stranger the best he could, wrapping up all his thoughts on being led on when there had obviously been no intention of letting them meet.

The stranger just curled his lips away from his teeth with a snarl and took off running.

That was, in all languages, a perfectly understandable _fuck you_.

\--

Doc had very often wrestled with the difficult question as to whether or not Wyatt was aware, however minimally, that Doc was not fully human. While there were no outward indications (such as Wyatt showing up with silver bullets and tearful declarations of having to send him straight to hell) there were a significant number of hints to make him wonder.

Most obviously, the morning after the first full moon of the month when Wyatt _never_ failed to show up to wherever Doc was staying. He was not driven to interrupt Doc’s slumber by anything that could be mistaken as kindness. No, Wyatt let himself into Doc’s room with the presumption that he would be _wanted_. He was always as loud as an oncoming train, throwing open any available curtain to let in the hateful sun. “What are you still doing sleeping?” 

Doc’s transformations were not limited to the full moon, nor were they limited by the time of day. He had the same ability to turn into an animal capable of eviscerating Wyatt the morning after as he had the night of. Blinded by the offensive cheerfulness of his friend and the unyielding sun coming through the dusty window across the room, he thought of how nice it would be to have fresh meat.

(He had not had time to catch anything delicious after being teased for half the night.)

“Why the hell are your feet so dirty?” Wyatt asked.

Doc was pushing his face into the bedding because the alternative was having to _look_ at Wyatt. Of course, avoiding eye contact wasn’t going to make the man go away because he had been brought to this room by an impulse he didn’t even understand. Whoever had said that Wyatt Earp wasn’t, at his core, a _cruel_ man had never had the bottom of his foot slapped at god-awful-early in the morning when they hadn’t slept more than a single wink the whole night. “I will shoot you,” he said very loudly and mostly into his pillow.

“Not without your guns.” Wyatt picked up the holster from where it was hanging off a chair and set it down again. 

“I will find a way,” he said. He didn’t roll off his belly but turned his head so he could look at Wyatt from under the safety of the bed sheet half-covering his face. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

Wyatt most certainly was not aware that he knew it had been a full moon the night before which meant he could not put into words why he was _here_. Instead he rolled his hand in the air, sorting through a series of rote answers until he found one he liked and it sounded like: “I was nearby.”

They lived in the same town.

“And,” Wyatt said as he dropped himself to sit in the chair he’d been standing next to, “I remembered that I am owed breakfast. I heard about your lucky streak at the poker tables and so I thought you are in a prime position to pay me back.”

“You wake me from my slumber and expect me to provide a meal for you? And I am to do this out of the kindness of my heart?”

Wyatt pulled his hat off and turned it in his hands. This was a moral dilemma that he had not yet worked out to his own satisfaction. While it always ended the same, it always started the same as well. Perhaps the very same part of Wyatt that was refusing to admit the obvious in regards to Doc not being fully human also could not grasp that Wyatt, himself, was not fully heterosexual. He turned his hat until he’d come up with today’s excuse, “I guess it still is _early_.”

“I cannot be reasonably expected to rise from my bed this early,” Doc assured him.

“I don’t have anything else to do,” said the man who was already removing his boots.

“And with the weather setting to change and my pitiful supply of firewood, it is downright chilly.”

“It is chilly in here.” That was an odd thing for a man to say as he shrugged out of his jacket and left his gun behind. Wyatt didn’t need the things he _said_ to match the things he _did_ as long as he got what he wanted. 

Doc wiggled over to make space and Wyatt slid into bed next to him. They were just friends, sharing a bed, keeping one another warm. If it mattered that Wyatt hadn’t been cold to start with or that Doc couldn’t get cold there was nobody to know but themselves. Wyatt fit along the front of his body almost perfectly so that Doc could wrap an around his chest and press his face into the back of Wyatt’s neck where the smell of him was strongest.

Wolves weren’t meant to be lonely creatures; they were pack animals. Wyatt wasn’t perfect but he was always willing. (Unlike a certain unnamed tease in the woods.)

\-- & \--

Robert had been stupid for trying to pretend he hadn’t noticed. There weren’t many so-called advantages that he enjoyed, but his sense of smell had always been useful even on bad days. People didn’t know all the many different ways the smell of their bodies gave away their intentions but _Robert_ did. He could tell just from sniffing when he found someone he needed to avoid.

And Robert was _very_ good at avoiding situations that weren’t going to end well for anyone caught in them. He didn’t have a single thing to prove to mortals and he wasn’t fully willing to let himself get pushed around just to give off the impression he wasn’t strong enough to defend himself. (He had been, once. But there were only so many times you could get kicked in the gut before that feral instinct to break a man’s legs took over.) 

Only, this time he hadn’t been avoiding something that didn’t have to be dealt with. He’d been avoiding something that he would _have_ to deal with. If he’d met it headon when he first realized, he could have had time to develop a plan. Now that he’d put it off, he’d given away his only chance for an advantage. 

The wallow where he’d been sleeping at the start of the evening reeked of the other wolf and that meant it had _his_ smell. That meant it could find him and it _would_ find him. Because Robert was the only one of his kind he’d ever met that walked out of a pack with no intention of going back.

That other wolf had _howled_ like it’s heart was breaking. It was _lonely_ and it would _not_ be able to keep from hunting him down.

\--

Wyatt had not set a specific time to meet him but that was not because Wyatt didn’t have an ideal time in mind. It was that Wyatt simply failed to realize that people did not exist solely to be where he needed them exactly when he needed them to be. (If Robert had any expectation of his liaison with Wyatt progressing into anything meaningful he might have put more effort into disabusing him of that selfish notion.) 

By the time Robert made it back to the drafty little house he kept outside of town, Wyatt had gone from (undoubtedly) waiting patiently, to waiting impatiently, to lounging in the only chair on the porch while he filled up the air with a stink of tobacco that seemed formulated _specifically_ to irritate Robert’s nose. 

On a good day, when Wyatt’s expectations were met without delay, the man was all smiles and generous hugs. On days like this, when he’d progressed to the angriest part of entitlement, he simply tamped down his pipe as he rolled up to his feet. He didn’t say so much as a greeting, just nodded his head and waited for Robert to open the door for him. 

Robert was still coated in dirt from taking his sweet time about shifting back into person shaped. He had napped out in the wallow he’d left behind because he had no reason to hurry back but that left him having to use his person legs to rush back in the end. Sweat was all well and good when it was earned through something fun but the way it was clinging to his clothes mixed up with that coating of dirt did nothing to make him exactly happy.

Wyatt slid in front of him, already dropping the pipe into his pocket as he looked around the one-room interior of Robert’s house like he’d never seen it before. As if he hadn’t been fucked over by the woodstove on more than one occasion. It didn’t matter what kind of expression _Wyatt_ was making because he smelled like fresh lust and…

Robert pushed the door closed with the tips of his fingers as he pulled Wyatt back up against his body with the other hand. The door didn’t close, and Wyatt didn’t fight but came so easily. He fit up against Robert all along the front, surging with a fresh smell of willingness that never failed to _surprise_ him. 

Normally that smell was the only thing he could scent on Wyatt, but Robert pushed his face into the collar of Wyatt’s shirt and dragged the smell of that other wolf out. It was so strong it couldn’t have been anything but intentional. 

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” Robert said because he’d been a meek man so long it had become his first instinct. “What’d you do while you were waiting?”

Wyatt’s ass was pressed back so it fit against his hips, and his shoulders were falling forward because Robert was leaning into him so hard. They were going to land on their knees by the front door that didn’t even close properly. Wyatt’s breath was thick in his throat when he said, “I saw a friend.”

No. This smell was all over Wyatt, from his collar to his belt. It covered him so completely it was almost a taste built up onto his skin. It was _ripe_ and _warm_ because Robert had run away from a lonely wolf on the full moon and instincts were so strong sometimes they almost hurt. 

“A friend like me?” Robert asked.

“No,” Wyatt gasped when Robert’s hand slid down to flatten against his belly. It wasn’t the touch he wanted but it was the last stop before they got there. “Doc. He just moved into a room in town, I went to see him.”

“Doc,” Robert growled into the nape of Wyatt’s neck, “ _Holliday_?”

Wyatt was an uncomplicated man, pulling them to the floor got them naked faster, and as wet and ready as that smell of lust around him had gotten, there was nothing more important to him in that moment than getting naked.

\--

Robert had never had a lover that mattered as much to him as the moon. Maybe that said something about the sad state of his affairs; that none of them could compete with a swollen silvery ball in the sky. It wasn’t even that Robert was in _love_ with the moon (although he was very fond of that feeling of absolute freedom it gave him) but that he was tied to it for an eternity. 

There was an elder in the pack he was born in that had been alive for _centuries_. There was a sacrifice that had to be made to live so long, but most wolves that were filled up with the sort of mortal panic that all dying things felt didn’t mind the sacrifice. Of course, it was hard to _mind_ when it was not you making the sacrifice.

Still, the moon had been rising for the better part of an hour. The sky had gone cool and dark. Even the lingering smell of Wyatt’s orgasm was washed out of his house by a breeze, and scrubbed off his skin by a good bath. There was nothing at all keeping Robert in his person skin, sitting in the only chair at his person house except that going out meant facing off against a wolf that would _most certainly_ be looking for him. 

Now Robert had never met Doc in person but he’d heard plenty of things about the sort of man he was. As often as he heard them, there had to be some manner of truth to the words. A man could not inflate his reputation but by so much without having actual witnesses to his actual deeds.

Men said Doc was like a bloodhound, that there was no criminal in the world that could hide from him once he had their scent. That was the words they used, _once he had their scent_ because people were people. They noticed things and they discarded the bits that didn’t fit. 

Robert had made a home _here_.

Leaving this house meant risking that. 

He’d gotten lucky the night before. Robert had smelled Doc when he shifted forms at the edge of the forest. He’d gotten a headstart and he’s still been close enough to be caught by the end. If Doc was as good with his nose as they said, there wasn’t any place safe in the whole forest to hide.

No. Robert had sat through a moon before without changing; he didn’t like it that time and he wasn’t going to like it this one but he had to have a plan before he did anything.

\--&\--

Doc had walked into the forest on human legs. He took the precaution of smoking as he went, letting the smell of the tobacco fill up the space around him so it overpowered anything he might consider his own scent. The forest was different when you were taller, when your eyes weren’t made to see well at night, when you couldn’t rely on your nose to find the best path for you.

Boots dulled the feeling of the dirt and that was all well and good when you had tender person feet but a wolf could learn a lot from the feeling under his paws. Human skin wasn’t made for retaining heat and that necessitated person clothes. Clothes changed with the times, and the situation and the _place_. Wolves only ever had fur.

The wallow was exactly where he remembered it. The whole of the day passing overhead hadn’t disrupted the worn edges where the wolf had rolled until he’d found a comfortable way to lay. Doc couldn’t _smell_ it how he wanted to, but he could smell it enough to recognize the scent as the one he’d followed the night before. 

That’s why he’d walked the whole way on person legs, because he needed to know what this wolf smelled like to a person’s nose. There were things that humans smelled stronger and things they smelled less, and there were plenty of men in town that could be _almost_ the one he was looking for.

He couldn’t say for _certain_ that the smell had gotten fainter, but he knew for sure that it hadn’t gotten stronger. The wolf didn’t want to be found; it wasn’t going to keep coming back here anymore. But that was alright, if he was anywhere nearby, Doc was going to find him.

\--

Wyatt wasn’t waiting for him when he got back to town and that was just as well when Doc didn’t feel like coming up with a good explanation for why he had blood dried into his hair. Some moons were lazy and some were wild and some were bloodsoaked. Doc had hunted for the sake of it, searching out anything that was willing to run away. 

He’d eaten as much as he could but he’d been soaked in blood before he was done. 

It had felt like madness unlike any he’d felt before. Sure, the moon could push him near to a feral state but he hadn’t felt something as belly-deep and needful in years. He had been lonely long enough to know that feeling of _want_ that overcame you when it had been too long since you’d had your needs met. But he’d held Wyatt in bed with him for hours, smothered him with Doc’s scent until it almost felt right. 

Out in the forest, caught in the full moon, Doc didn’t want _almost right_. He’d spent the night hunting, always looking for some sign of the other wolf’s scent and finding nothing but things that could be eaten. The longer he looked, the less he found, the hungrier he had gotten.

\--

A man had once asked Doc what was so special about him that women couldn’t seem to help themselves from swooning at the mere sight of him. There were many, many answers to that question. Doc preferred to think that women were attracted to him because he _was_ attractive. He liked to think that his body was pleasant to look at and even nicer to feel. 

Women liked a man that could treat them right in all the ways that mattered and treat them wrong in all the ways that felt best. There was a fine line you had to walk between being confident and cocky. Being charming and being _entitled_.

But the simplest answer was most obvious on the days around the full moon, when Doc couldn’t go anywhere at all without finding himself with a lapful of whatever woman had beat out the others to get there. Doc had an _advantage_ because underneath his pleasing person face, he was nothing but an animal. He was filled up with something that they couldn’t _possibly_ understand. Something they couldn’t imagine to be true. 

Maybe it wasn’t fair the way pouring your bed partner one too many drinks wasn’t fair, but Doc couldn’t help but be the thing he was. The sort of women that liked that couldn’t help how they felt. The least he could do (unlike some tease in the woods) was make sure they didn’t get left wondering what might have been.

Could be he was only making justifications. Morals were the sort of thing you had when you weren’t trying to drink yourself into forgetting the things you didn’t like about life. Drinking let you think anything was a good idea when it was what you wanted.

Harriet (so she said her name was) _had_ wanted him. It had been her hands on his vest, pulling him down a short hall to an empty room. It had been her cool fingers undoing the fastenings on his pants and her tongue pressed into his mouth. It was her voice whispering nonsense about how she certainly never did anything like this. Harriet had thighs the color of cream, and she had nails like a mountain lion. 

“Just like this,” she gasped when he tried to move her from where she’d fallen against the wall to anywhere that might have been more comfortable. She was light as a feather, even when she started bucking back into his quickening thrusts. With her head tipped back and her hair in knots and tangles, she was the _most_ satisfying thing he had ever seen. 

At least since he’d been dragged to this very room for this very purpose by the woman before her. Just as soon as she cleared out, and he got in a round of poker and a decent drink, there was going to be another one. That was just fine, as close to the moon as it was, he wasn’t likely to run out of energy before he ran out of willing women. 

\--

Wyatt was sitting in Doc’s chair, drinking Doc’s drink. He looked as amused by the proceedings around him as a priest in a whore house. (Well, that largely depended on the priest, really. But one of those disapproving types.) In fact, he managed to look so fully disappointed by everything that even the most stalwart of men had up and left the table. The only reminder that a game of cards had been being played was the cards themselves. 

“To what do I owe the honor of your presence at my table?” he pulled out a chair across from Wyatt. He pulled a cigarillo out of his pocket. “I was under the impression you had some business that was going to take you out of town for a few weeks.”

“How many is that?” Wyatt asked as Harriet glided toward the door. 

Even if she was aiming to make her exit seem natural and relaxed, there was no mistaking how banging her head against the wall as she left welts on Doc’s back had messed up her hair. Her face was still flushed, and even if the humans weren’t aware of what they were smelling, the scent of her satisfaction was strong enough everyone knew what she’d been doing. (And good for her.) 

Doc shrugged. “A gentleman does not keep count.”

“Not even for the evening?”

“Since you have stolen my drink, I believe you owe me another one.”

Wyatt smiled at him as he lifted the glass and pressed it to his mouth. He drank the liquor like a french kiss, so perfectly lewd and pleased with himself. His nose wrinkled up as he swallowed, and his tongue chased the wetness from his lips. “I don’t believe I do.”

They would just have to agree to disagree about that. “Did you need something, Wyatt?”

No. This was just another instance of Wyatt’s instinctive need to be _annoying_ when Doc’s patience was at its thinnest. Any other day, he might have been amused by Wyatt’s bitchiness. They could have had a drink and played a few rounds of cards.

“I thought we could have a drink,” but Wyatt didn’t prefer drinking. 

They could have. Only, there was a beautiful woman who had been waiting her turn for the better part of an hour. She wasn’t as shy as the last two had been and why would she need to be? This was not an establishment where you went to improve your reputation. Everyone knew what sort of people frequented here. She stopped by the table with a smile and her fingertips tip-toeing up his arm from his elbow to his shoulder. 

She lifted an eyebrow as she said, “you got any left?”

“I saved some just for you,” he promised. He glanced over at Wyatt just in time to see him frowning, “you can keep that drink.”

\--&\--

Robert couldn’t blame Doc for his lack of manners, because you couldn’t be held responsible for the culture you never learned. He’d known from the first moment, when he’d pulled the fine tendrils of the new wolf’s smell into his lungs that Doc was the only thing as rare as he was: a true lone wolf. While Robert had a pack that he’d left behind, Doc had been born without one. Everything he knew about anything was something he’d figured out on his own.

Instinct was a powerful thing without anything to temper it.

A _polite_ wolf wouldn’t have left a warm and bleeding corpse where it was sure to be found. He would have left a portion because he would have taken the time to select the most delectable portion of the kill. You could have pride in leaving behind something like that; it was as close to a man bringing a woman flowers as wolves got.

Instead, he’d been left almost a whole rabbit at the edge of the wallow he’d been forced to abandon. Working out what the human half of Doc’s brain had meant by leaving it could take years (it could have been a threat just as easily as an attempt at flirtation) but the wolf part was easy enough. The rabbit was plump and it _smelled_ like it must taste delicious. It wasn’t half-eaten but left as whole as it could be when Doc had finished killing it. This was a wolf inviting a man out to dinner, telling him all about how he could provide.

He had walked through the forest on his human legs, but there were some things that you simply couldn’t eat with person teeth. Some things that your human tongue wasn’t meant to enjoy. 

(If he had a moment of guilt, between his person skin and his wolf body, about how he was accepting a gift without answering the overture behind it, he didn’t worry about it too long.)

\--

There were only a few things that could hide a wolf’s scent from another wolf of average ability. Given the nature of their transformations and the constant need for secrecy, their scents had evolved to be easily detectable to one another _despite_ their attempts to hide. That was fantastic when your aim was to band together amid the humans without giving yourself away. That was the reason that all packmates shared the same sort of smell, so you could pick out your brother from a crowd of a hundred smelly humans with just a single sniff.

However, there were even _less_ things that were strong enough to hide your scent from someone with an above average sense of smell. Maybe the human rumors were only spectacular because Doc could track someone by smell or maybe he was one of the few that could pick apart smells no matter how strong they were. That second kind was uniquely dangerous when you were attempting to escape notice and given Robert’s luck, was the most likely kind of wolf Doc was.

Robert didn’t have the proper herb to most effectively eliminate his scent so he had to resort to less pleasant methods. While the herb could be carried in a sachet, there was no comparable method of _covering_ his scent. The human world was full of things that smelled bad, all he had to do was find the most tolerable one and cover enough of his clothes or skin with it that nobody (not even Doc) _wanted_ to smell him. 

The quickest and simplest solution was to hunt down a skunk. It wasn’t a feat for a wolf. (It was just stupid.) Robert wasn’t even the sort of wolf that got too caught up in the _ecstasy_ and _joy_ of hunting. There were plenty of perfectly good things to eat that he didn’t have to kill with his own teeth. 

Even so, he ate the skunk that sprayed him.

\--

Robert wore glasses because there were plenty of men who thought he was lesser because of it. They made him look small when he wasn’t and that let him slip through the drudgery of society without being remembered by too many people that saw him. Even the man at the post office, who saw him more than anyone, always seemed to greet him like it was the first time they’d ever met. 

Oh hello, he said with the word _stranger_ lingering on his lips. And Robert always smiled at him with his best impression of a man who had never succeeded at anything in all his life. He said, _Robert_ because it was _expedient_ and any man that was accustomed to being forgotten would always introduce himself straightaway. 

Of course, smelling like a skunk’s ass, he didn’t have to worry about people taking notice of him because everyone he walked past in town did their best quick-step to get away from him. He had only come into town because Wyatt had extracted promises from him when he wasn’t thinking straight and he was supposed to meet the man at the end of the main road to see him off on his next adventure. 

There had been (Robert thought) some talk about leaving behind a task that needed accomplishing. Knowing Wyatt, it was probably making sure his mail got opened and sorted out. That was the sort of thing a man needed a smart wife for, but Wyatt had decided that Robert was perfectly qualified to read through his fan letters. They were entertaining reading but they were _not_ the sort of occupation that Robert was hoping to gain. Especially since it felt like Wyatt was grasping at straws, trying to find some excuse for paying Robert that wasn’t because of sex. 

(Even if they both knew the reason Wyatt wanted to pay him was because he liked the sex.)

By the time he arrived at the meeting spot, well away from the shopkeeper standing in front of his store with a broom, the smell had given _him_ a headache. Every part of his skin was crawling with a great need to strip out of these stupid human clothes and run until the smell was whipped out of his hair by sheer effort. 

“What is that _ungodly_ smell?” 

Wyatt, who did not understand a subtle insult, said, “skunk.”

Robert looked up from staring down at his watch in time to see how Doc Holliday (presumably) flattened his lips into a frown so severe there was no mistaking his disappointment. His whole face was caught in a pinch of disgust far too great to be explained by an unpleasant smell. In fact, he stopped several feet away from Wyatt and didn’t move another inch. 

“Sorry,” Robert said. “I ran into trouble.”

“Doc,” Wyatt said.

Doc pulled a cigarillo out of his pocket and made a show of smelling it before he dug out a box of matches. “I am just fine right here, Wyatt. I can see your,” he motioned at Robert with absolutely no mercy, “ _friend_.”

“Uh, Robert,” he said. Since they were doing introductions he pulled his hat off and stuck his hand out. Doc was caught in a social setting so he couldn’t physically recoil, but every part of his body tensed up at the thought of having to get _any_ closer. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Holliday.”

“ _Doctor_ ,” Doc said, “hence the name.” 

“Right.” Robert let his hand hang in the air a half-breath too long before he dropped it. “Sorry, of course.” 

“Don’t worry about him,” Wyatt said. “He was up all night drinking. Now, if you think you’ll have the time, I do have some things that I’ll need taken care of while I’m out of town. I shouldn’t be gone long, but depending on what I find it could be a few weeks.” 

While Doc had managed to move another step backward while nobody was really watching, Wyatt didn’t mind being enveloped in the stink with him. It was hard to smell _anything_ except the pungent odor of the skunk’s spray, but Robert was _fairly_ certain that Wyatt’s skin smelled just like Doc all over again. 

Now _that_ was interesting. It had been interesting the first time (only he’d been distracted) but it was _more_ interesting now. 

“I’d be happy to help you, Wyatt,” Robert assured him. “Anything you need. I’m always happy to help.”


	2. Chapter 2

Wyatt’s useless, smelly little friend had given him a headache bad enough to work as an excuse to go back to bed. Not that a man with Doc’s reputation and profession needed any reason to sleep as late as he pleased. Nobody was going to come looking for him, thinking they were likely to find a respectable gentleman awake at a respectable time.

Of course, as new as he was to this town, nobody was going to come looking for him regardless. What few contacts he’d made in town were the sort of men that were best in the early afternoon when the poker tables started collecting enough interest to make it worth your time to show up. 

That was fine, besides the headache and being up all night, there was an exceptionally overwhelming amount of lethargy that overtook a wolf as the moon lost its luster. Maybe it _was_ only a matter of returning to his regular level of energy but after being infused with such inexhaustible power it _felt_ a little like dying. 

The most that he could expect out of his body was crossing the distance of his room from door to bed and maybe, if he were feeling especially peckish, dragging himself out to find something to eat later. 

\--

Meat was the most effective cure for the waning moon. The redder and fresher, the better, but Doc was (by nature) too lazy to go hunting for something that would be revitalizing. He suspected that it was an easier feat when you had a pack; he was fully capable of hunting something that would satisfy him when he was person-shaped. Maybe he could have suffered through putting in all that effort, but as he _was_ person-shaped there were far easier methods available. 

Every town he’d settled in had a local butcher, or at very least, a man among them that was known for having a reliable selection of fresh meat. Any cut of a cow would suffice when your aim was to gorge on bleeding meat, but Doc was especially fond of the bits with bones. He didn’t raise so much as an eyebrow ordering a selection of cuts with a side of whatever organs sounded delicious. (Doc was not fond of livers because of their taste, but they did do wonders for making him feel better.) 

Now, a few towns ago he had lived in a little house far enough from anyone who might wander past an open window to find a massive wolf enjoying his dinner. He always had plenty of time and space to make sure he cleaned up the blood left behind when he was done, but his _current_ room was situated in a much busier thoroughfare and that did require some discretion. 

Only nervous men bothered to think up explanations to questions they weren’t going to get asked. Doc had never been asked where he was going (except by Wyatt) or what he intended to do with his purchases (except by Wyatt). 

Still, there was always a moment between leaving his horse in a shady place at the edge of the trees and stepping into the forest in the early afternoon when he felt like he was being watched. There was a nervous little jump in his pulse, like maybe he ought to have some explanation for his behavior. 

(Of course, if he ever were caught and in desperate need of an excuse, he could just eat the man asking.)

Doc carried his dinner back to the wallow, expecting to find a rotting rabbit and finding nothing but a few leftover bones and the renewed smell of the other wolf. 

There had to be a word to describe how it felt to stand there. There had to be some _reason_ that he rubbed the dirt between his thumb and finger, like he could squeeze the identity of the wolf out if he tried hard enough. The other wolf didn’t want to be _found_ , but it didn’t mind eating what was left for it. 

Anger was a good word, because he _was_ angry. Being angry was always easier than being _hurt_. Hurt implied that he was vulnerable. Vulnerable was a terrible thing for a man to be and a worse thing for a wolf that had nobody watching his back.

Doc couldn’t do anything about a wolf that didn’t want to be found, so he stripped out of his clothes and his person skin. He laid in the wallow, soaking up the comfort of the lingering smell, while he gorged on his feast of fresh meat.

\--&\--

If Doc didn’t stop leaving fresh meat at the wallow he was going to start attracting real wild animals. Still, Robert wasn’t so proud or rude that he would turn down the wrapped up rack of ribs that had been left behind him. Honestly, he would have been even happier if Doc had left any of the liver that he had been eating. The smell of it was steeped into the soil so strongly it almost overpowered every other smell around it. 

Robert did _not_ shift into a wolf at the wallow because that would leave behind the impression that he wanted this flirtation to continue. It had been a mistake to do it the last time; it would be _cruel_ to do it again. 

No, he kicked up the dirt where it had been flattened and took the ribs with him back to his one-room homestead.

\--

Robert did not have a job because there was no concept that directly related to the culture he was raised in. Wolves had things they had to do for the good of the pack; they had what might be considered _chores_ if one wanted to stretch the definition of the word. They did _not_ have some arbitrary requirement to commit to a single task that would then provide them the means to survive and feed themselves. He had been wholly unprepared for the human idea of _jobs_. 

It wasn’t a matter of a lack of education, because his pack had certainly put emphasis on learning all the human things that would allow them to go in and out of their societies without notice. He’d been put through school the same as any child might have. He’d labored over reading and writing and _math_ until it made his head swim. But when he was finished with it, he wasn’t asked to decide what thing he planned to do for the rest of his life.

As such, Robert had no occupation and lacking any _degree_ or _special skill_ , he found himself in constant need of men like Wyatt who thought he was very useful for whatever needed doing. (Even if the thing that needed doing was the man himself.)

Robert’s least favorite task was retrieving mail. It seemed to be the most constant task he was assigned by every benefactor he’d ever had. Retrieve, read, sort, respond and report. 

It was a good job for a meek man who wore glasses and a plaid suit and smelled like a skunk’s ass. 

“Sir,” the postmaster said before he even made it over the threshold of the post office, “you cannot come in here smelling like that. You just wait there and I’ll get to you when I can get to you.”

There was a pretty woman with very dark hair already in the building, looking like she was trying not to gag as she pressed a delicate white handkerchief to her mouth. He certainly hoped it was scented because there were few things that smelled as badly as he did at the moment. 

Robert was a meek man, so he wouldn’t lean against a wall. No he stood outside between the hitching post and the door, holding his hat in his hand, looking very sorry for all the trouble he was causing. 

A passing couple took the precaution of crossing the street so as to put extra distance between him and their defenseless noses. He couldn’t even say that he’d _adjusted_ to the smell lingering around him, because it still hit him in the face now and again. It was hardest to ignore when he was falling asleep, and it always snuck up on him when he woke up in the morning. 

“Should I assume from your position by the door that the local postmaster is trying to relay the message that he would not like to be bothered at this time?” Doc was _behind_ him, standing at least six feet down and looking every bit as pissed off about it as he had the last time. His nose was wrinkled up in disgust.

“He asked me to wait outside,” Robert said.

Doc dug out another of his cigarillos to make this moment bearable for himself, “how _exactly_ did a man such as yourself come across a skunk?” There was an implication in there that either Robert was useless or that he was incapable of doing anything more useful than collecting mail. 

(He shouldn’t be upset about it; that was the impression he wanted to leave. But he _was_ still upset about it.) “I was chasing it away from my house,” Robert said. He added a shrug, like a regret.

“Smart men know to leave them alone,” Doc said. He wasn’t _smoking_ but holding the cigarillo in front of his face so the smell of it was filling his nose. It must have been working because the disgusted pinch relaxed out of his expression. “I suppose you are here to collect Wyatt’s mail? I’ve always wondered what sort of man he got to do his errands for him. Of course,” and he said this with perfect meanness, “I had expected it would be some younger fellow. It just doesn’t seem like a proper occupation for a _man_.”

Robert couldn’t swear he’d ever been so completely insulted before. If given a moment to collect himself, he certainly could have come up with a response, but the post office door slapped open and the pretty young woman ducked out. He cleared his throat and motioned with his whole arm toward the building, “I guess it’s my turn.”

“Oh by all means,” Doc said with a sweeping gesture. (Ladies first.)

\--&\--

The trouble with being good at something was that every so often a man with bigger balls than brains and a reasonably hurt ego kicked his chair back away from a perfectly civil poker game to scream, “you’re nothing but a cheat!”

“Now, Harry…”

“ _Hayes_!”

“ _Hayes_ ,” he repeated, “there is no need for you to get so upset. There is always the very slight chance that you will be able to recoup some of your losses if you would just sit down and play another round.” (No, there wasn’t.) 

Some men were smart enough to know when they were being called stupid. This man was _not_ one of those people, but he knew well enough when the people snickering around him were doing so at his expense. An impatient man didn’t see the worth in waiting to get satisfaction, Hayes pulled his gun with a clumsy jerk of his arm thereby telegraphing his intentions to everyone. 

Doc could have shot him before he even had the gun cocked and properly aimed, but he leaned back in his seat instead. One of his hands was hanging to his side and the other was resting on the tabletop, pushing a poker chip in a little circle, around and around and _around_. “That is not very sporting of you, Hayes.”

A roomful of men with guns, and not a single one of them had enough brains to realize they weren’t in any mortal danger. Even the men at the table had eased back a little bit. One or two of them were feeling for their own weapons, but most of them were just hoping to get out of this without a bloodbath. 

“This is a bad idea,” Doc said slowly. “Even a man like yourself must know who I am.”

Hayes grit his teeth, “you’re a cheat at cards.”

If only they were farther away from a roomful of witnesses, Doc could have indulged one of his baser desires. As it was, he simply slid his chair back as he got to his feet. He’d taken off his coat so it was draped over the back of his chair. Hayes was _outraged_ that he was being so completely ignored, as Doc picked up his coat to slide his arms back into it. “Now there is no need to dirty this fine establishment,” he said. “If you intend to _attempt_ to shoot me, you should do so outside.”

“Attempt?” 

Doc slid the poker chips off the edge of the table and dropped the whole lot into his pockets so nobody had any idea of taking them while he wasn’t looking. Then he picked his hat up and turned around to head toward the nearest door. 

Poor Hayes was left with the choice between shooting a man in the back and following after him like a child. He must have chosen to follow because a whole crowd of men were scraping their chairs across the floor to stampede after him. 

By the time Doc made it outside into the street and retrieved a cigarillo from his pocket, the streets were all but _lined_ with spectators. A helpful messenger must have gone through the nearby buildings to draw out a crowd, because even the fine smelling establishment across the narrow street had all its customers filling up the porch.

There was a stink in that crowd that Doc could have picked out of a hundred more people. A sort of stomach turning, headache-inducing foulness that any reasonable, intelligent man would have put more effort into scrubbing out of his skin. But Wyatt’s smelly friend didn’t seem to possess the smarts to even spell the words self-esteem. 

That didn’t stop Robert from shuffling over uninvited. No, the man got so close there was no ignoring the smell of that skunk soaked into his skin. Even as close as he got, close enough to whisper, the only smell he was giving off was that fucking skunk. “ _Doc_ ,” he said like they were _friends_ , “you cannot shoot this man in the middle of the street. There are _laws_.”

Doc lit his cigarillo, “he’s going to shoot me first.”

Robert didn’t sigh with his mouth, but his whole body sighed for him. “You _cannot_ shoot this man.”

“I _can_ ,” Doc promised. “However, the efficacy of this man’s shot is unknown and I cannot promise your safety. If you get shot, who will sort out Wyatt’s mail and retrieve his packages from the store? You better get somewhere safe.”

Just for a moment, the space between one blink and the other, Robert’s whole body straightened up and he looked like an entirely different man altogether. His expression didn’t flinch like it had been, his eyes were apologizing. No, just for that brief, brief second, he was… 

It was gone too fast to know for sure if it had happened at all. 

“Admit you cheated at cards!” Hayes shouted at him from down the street. “That’s all I want! Just admit that you’re a dirty cheat.”

“Are you going?” Doc asked.

Robert looked regretful about it, but he shook his head and he stayed right where he was. “Wyatt wouldn’t like this.”

“Well I suppose it is a common misconception among many men,” he pulled his gun and took a quick look out of the corner of his eye to see where dear Hayes had gotten off to, “that I am at _all_ motivated by Wyatt Earp’s likes and dislikes.” He shot the gun right out of Hayes’ fumbling hand.

The shot ran through the street and echoed like a scream up and down the crowd. Hayes screamed with them, shaking his uninjured hand like it was burning hot. 

Robert did sigh then. “Of course,” he said, “forgive me for assuming.”

\--

If Doc had been at a loss to explain how he felt about his offering being accepted but not reciprocated before, that confusion of feelings was cleared up by the destruction of the wallow. A man couldn’t send a clearer message than taking the gift left for him and digging ruts through the bed he’d made himself. 

Just like their first meeting, never a clearer _fuck you_ had been spoken.

Doc had suffered worse rejections in his life. (Or he thought he had.) It wasn’t even that big of a deal to lose something that he had never actually possessed. And _yet_ , it felt like something was being ripped open inside of his chest. It was gathering up like a storm just behind his ribs. It was a wild and out of control feeling, filled up with roiling darkness and thunder. 

Anger at its absolute _finest_ left a metallic hunger in his mouth. The sensation of wolf jaws trying to break through his human face. It felt like, in that first moment at the edge of the wallow, like he could have gone mad.

\--&\--

The woman that served him apologized for the inconvenience of being kept outdoors but she didn’t seem to be as sorry as she was trying to make it seem. Robert had been put in far worse situations than being kept outside to eat his dinner even if it was _awkward_ to hold a hot plate and eat off it at the same time. 

Cooked meat didn’t have the same appeal to him as the wilder, fresher counterpart no matter how they spiced it. He’d gotten used to the dull flavor of it because hunting too often would make the humans nervous about how they had a wolf problem that needed solving. Unlike Doc who didn’t seem to care about what sort of impression going to a butcher shop and buying a whole rack of ribs might give off, Robert was too careful to be so bold. 

He did like bread. It was, by far, his favorite of human food. Especially when it was warm like it was now. Potatoes weren’t so bad as long as they weren’t left bland and unflavored. (Which, sadly, they sometimes were.) 

“Hey.” There was a boy that skidded to a stop with a grimace on his sweating-red face. He didn’t seem to know who he was looking at, but that didn’t stop him from charging on with, “are you the guy that’s been helping Wyatt Earp? They said you would probably be here and that you smelled like skunk. And mister, you smell really bad. That or it’s the food.”

“Yes,” Robert said.

“Well good,” and the boy wiped his forehead on his sleeve before shifting how he was standing to point his feet back the way he’d come. “I was sent out here to find you if you were in town because the madam at the bordello has a bit of a problem.”

“I don’t think--”

“It’s Doc Holliday,” the boy continued, as if Robert had not ever attempted to interrupt him, “everyone loves Doc! He’s great for business because he makes everyone laugh and then all the guys feel like they’ve got to answer a challenge, you know? And of course they have to pay to answer. _But_ , madam says if someone doesn’t come and get him out of her house that she’s going to have to shoot him. He’s been there since last night and he’s holding all the girls hostage. At least that’s what I’m supposed to say. They’re not hostage, but they won’t leave.”

Robert just wanted to eat. “They _won’t_ leave?”

“The will _not_ ,” the boy agreed. “If you’re friends with Wyatt then you probably should save his friend before he gets shot.”

It would most likely take a lot more than one bordello madam and whatever sort of gun she had on hand to shoot Doc in any way that could be considered meaningful. Robert looked at his half-eaten plate of (mediocre) food and then sighed. “Fine,” he said, “show me where he is.”

\--

The boy had led him up the stairs but stopped before they reached the landing. He was hesitating at the last step, settling for pointing at the open door in the corner, “they’re in there. I’m going to go and tell the madam that I found you. I wouldn’t take very long about doing whatever you’re going to do. I’ve never heard her be more serious about shooting someone.” 

Robert had prepared a face for most human events. He’d practiced all of them so they came naturally, but he hadn’t thought he’d need one to encompass this moment he found himself suddenly participating in. There was no stock response to properly convey that he was _embarrassed_ and _annoyed_ and this was a _departure_ from his comfort zone. Because Robert certainly wasn’t the sort of man that would hire a sex partner. (It wasn’t a matter of morals but confidence.) 

There was a woman wearing almost nothing under a robe, loitering in the hall by the door. “ _You’re_ going to get him out of there?” 

“I’m going to try.”

She snorted at him. “Madam threatened to kick them all out of the house and they didn’t even flinch.” That was as good as saying she was looking forward to watching him fail. 

The room itself wasn’t nearly as large as he had expected. (Of course, it didn’t take a lot of room to have sex, usually.) It was predominantly taken up by a bed that _was_ far larger than he’d expected. Someone must have opened the window with the intent of letting the sunshine do all the work of dispersing the _crowd_ presently snuggling sleepily together on the bed.

At first glance, it was _too_ much to make sense of. There was the curve of a bare back in one space, and the delicate curl of bent legs in another. There were more arms than it seemed like there were bodies to belong to. Everywhere he looked, there was the chaotic tangle of long hair. If he stared, he might have been able to count exactly how many bodies were on the bed. It was a matter of sorting out which arm and which leg belonged to who.

Nudity did not offend him; he’d grown up in a pack where more often than not the very idea was laughable. He hadn’t learned to be fully comfortable in so many layers until very recently and even then it was less about comfort and more about becoming accustomed to it. He was _used_ to these clothes but that did not mean he liked them. 

No, he wasn’t overwhelmed by a variety of naked asses. He couldn’t count himself offended by breasts or bellies or thighs. 

It wasn’t how they were laying all over one another, overlapping so completely that sorting them out would take significant _effort_. Packs were made up of families and every family slept together in a heap. You laid with your friends in the afternoon when the heat was at its worst and you slept with your body consumed by all the bodies around it. 

No.

Robert couldn’t _find_ Doc at first, second or even fifth glance. He was looking for their hands, because all the women had beautiful, white slim hands. He counted them from the top of the bed to the bottom, checking each one and finding _nothing._

“Excuse me,” he said, at last. 

Not a single person on the bed did more than crack open an eyelid to glance at him, and finding nothing worth looking at, relaxed back into their happy doze. 

Doc _was_ there. Buried under the smell of so many other bodies, his scent was almost _feral_. There was always the possibility that he _was_ buried. It wouldn’t do for him what he wanted it to do, but it would smother the urge to find others like himself. If he couldn’t have a little pile of wolves, he could suffocate himself in a mountain of human bodies. 

“I really have to insist,” Robert said again. He took a stuttering step to the side, looking for any limbs that didn’t match with the others. He was all set to give up on taking the meek route and simply start extracting all the women starting with the ones closest to the edge when he _finally_ found what had to be Doc’s elbow. “Mr. Holliday,” he said loudly enough he could be heard.

The answer was almost immediate, a rumbling snarl of annoyance that made one of the girls giggle. She rolled onto her side from where she’d been laying across Doc’s back. His face was mostly hidden by the woman stroking his hair. “I am not one of Wyatt’s packages that you are tasked with collecting,” Doc said.

“No, of course not,” Robert said. “The madam asked me to try to convince you to leave on your own. She wants to shoot you.”

“If she wanted me to vacate her business, she could have had the decency to ask me herself.” He hadn’t moved except to brush the hair out of his face so it was back behind his ear. Without the woman laying across his back, the stink of his body got bright and louder. It was a thick cloud of yesterday’s sex and dried sweat. 

“She did,” one of the women said.

“About three times,” another one added.

Doc growled again. Human throats were meant to sound menacing so the best that growl conveyed was a deep disappointment at being proven wrong. But Doc pulled his arms in toward his body so he could lift himself up and look over his shoulder at Robert. “I believe if you continue to stand there, they will be forced to charge you for the privilege.” 

“He smells atrocious,” said one of the women. “Looking is about all I’d let him do.” (That was just as well, looking was more than he was interested in anyway.)

Doc smiled at that, “now ladies, we should not fault our less intelligent fellow men. They cannot help how they were born.”

They were all giggling, a great mass of limbs all at once tickled pink by a stupid joke. 

“I’ll be outside the door,” Robert said.

Doc wasn’t listening to him _at all_ , he was saying some low and sweet and promising to the woman closest to his face. 

\--

Regardless of what sort of promises he’d been making the women inside the room, Doc emerged fully dressed and fully covered in the women’s scent. He paused just outside the door, less than an arm’s distance from Robert, to light his cigarillo. 

“It is curious to me, that the madam sent for _you_ when it is _me_ she was having an issue with. She must have been _powerfully_ desperate to think a man such as yourself was capable of resolving this little _issue_ she was having.” 

Robert had been doing his best to stare at his shoes and look uncomfortable. It wasn’t as much an act as it might have been in any other circumstances because he did _not_ want to be here. He didn’t want to be waiting outside a room full of women that were heating up to the notion of getting a repeat performance of whatever the hell Doc had done to them the night before. (Oh, but Robert _did_ know what Doc had done because he could smell it.) He didn’t want to be stuck there like an idiot while women walked past him making low and pitying noises in their throats when they saw him. “I can’t say what she was feeling,” Robert said, “but you’re out of the room now. So I would consider the issue resolved.”

Maybe he should have remembered how Doc had shot the gun out of man’s hand just because Robert had told him he shouldn’t. Maybe he should have remembered _anything_ he’d ever heard about this man, and it wouldn’t have been such a surprise to find himself shoved back so suddenly and with such strength that the wall felt like it bounced upon impact. It filled up the open hall and stairs with an echoing slap.

Doc followed him, leaning in close so the smoke seeping out of his mouth was filling up Robert’s face. “You are an unlikeable little rat,” Doc hissed at him, “I suggest if you have any ambition to keep on being such, you put more effort into keeping yourself out of my way.”

The threat must have been good enough on it’s own, because Doc didn’t stay a second longer than it took to say. He shoved away from Robert with sneer and headed down the stairs like it was all business-as-normal for him. The madam that had been set on shooting him (supposedly) only moments before told him to have a lovely afternoon. 

Robert barely had a moment to straighten away from the wall and fix his clothes before the same boy that had brought him here jogged up the stairs to the last step and cleared his throat at him. 

“Madam needs you to leave,” the boy said, “it’s nothing personal, she says. We’re all very happy that you were able to evict Doc--at least except the ladies probably--but it was time for him to go. It was an awful amount of noise last night. All the shrieking? The whole house was shaking. But,” he took a step backward when Robert finally started moving, “tomatoes should work. I got sprayed once. I couldn’t stand it. My grandpa told me that tomatoes always work. Madam said she could talk to a man she knows, he farms tomatoes and always has a bunch that aren’t worth selling but they’d work for you,” he motioned at Robert’s entire body.

\--&\--

Doc had gone for a run because there was nothing he could do with his human skin that would be as satisfying. He’d tried everything from liquor to women to gambling. He’d hunted down a fight that promised to be bloody and put money on a sure win. 

It used to be, finding a reasonably sized room of blood-hot individuals willing to beat the shit out of one another scratched the particular itch he was presently feeling. It allowed him to be wholly surrounded by primal violence without having to participate in it. (Although, he had, at times, participated.) The smell of their bodies filled up with impotent rage and bloodlust overlaid with the smell of actual _blood_ and the undeniable whimpering sound a man made when he was knocked down too many times. Oh, there was nothing else in the human world that came close. 

Not even the sort of killing that Doc had come to be famous for. Guns were all well and good when you were aiming to keep your hands dirty. But that feeling crawling up and down his spine was set so deep into his bones that no amount of shooting was going to make it better. 

Doc needed to leave town and he knew it. There was nothing here for him but more of the same sensation, of being _constantly_ followed by something that he couldn’t have and didn’t rightly even want. It had started out as a yearning; as that old tickle of loneliness that separated him from the humans he’d been raised with. But _this_ wasn’t that anymore. 

If he didn’t get away from this place, and the anger and hunger that it left burning in his gut, he was going to be consumed by it. He was making plans to relocate as soon as Wyatt came back; it was always best to tell the man to his face when you were moving on. He would track you down even if you didn’t.

That was a week off, or better, still so Doc went for a run. He stripped out of his human clothes and person skin, and ran the whole length of the woods. Doc was aiming for exhausting himself, but the impulse to go as fast as he could turned _ugly_ around a bend when he ran into a fox. 

Every bit of him that had been pushed until it was singing with heat was _starving_ in that instant. As hungry for the taste of the fox’s flesh as it was for the fight the animal would put up to keep from dying. He didn’t even try to fight it back.

\--

The way back to where he’d left his clothes too far longer than the way into the forest had taken. Doc was _tired_ from running and full from the feast he’d made of that fox. His left leg was _aching_ where it had been torn into by the fox’s little jaws. Every step he took made the pain turn all hot and liquid again, until he was ready to give up and change back into a man. It was his left leg as a wolf but his left _arm_ as a human and that wouldn’t slow him down at all. 

Maybe he would have done it, in another minute, if not how he caught the faint edge of a familiar smell. It was stronger on a whispering breeze winding through the trees than it had been the last time Doc had seen the wallow. This wasn’t just a place where a wolf had happened to lay, but the full smell of somewhere often visited. 

He’d been all over the forest in the weeks since the full moon and he hadn’t found this smell before. That could just mean that he’d missed it, but it was _more_ likely that the other wolf had left him something that was meant to be found. There was a thought in that assumption; an idea that he wasn’t fully willing to wrap his brain around. That the wolf was somewhere in town or very nearby and that maybe he’d been watching. 

Still, Doc followed the smell through the older trees that grew thicker and _heavy_. They weighed down the forest floor so the dirt was harder under his paws. He went around and around a tree until he found the narrow opening near the base that led down a slope into a dusty little den. The smell was so strong on the inside that the wolf itself might as well have been there. 

He _had_ been, but he wasn’t now. He’d left a blanket, rolled into a ball and tossed down into the den. It didn’t matter what the other wolf was _offering_ because Doc couldn’t have stopped himself from dragging the blanket out as flat as he could get it and rolling his body into the smell even if he’d wanted to. 

He laid on the blanket with his face buried under a fold and breathed in the smell of the other wolf until it made him sleepy. That terrible thing that had been following just behind his back faded away just a bit, just _enough_ that he felt something like normal again. 

\--&\--

Robert should have walked away.

His life had been created to be mobile. His relationships were always kept brief and mutually beneficial. He’d spent the whole of his human life drifting from one place to another, staying only long enough to get the resources and knowledge he needed to move somewhere else. Every part of him had been perfectly crafted to be _forgettable_. 

Men did not remember Robert longer than it took for him to walk out of the room. He had nothing at all tying him to this place, but Doc _did_. Doc had come here because Wyatt had; because the pair of them were famous (or infamous, depending on your view). Doc’s life was tied up in his human skin and Robert hadn’t considered how desperate it would make him to have his animal instincts driven to such heights. 

The stink of the skunk had kept Doc from smelling him while he was standing right in front of him. It had kept him safe from being found out, but it could _not_ fully eliminate the scent he left behind. It didn’t erase that purely instinctual part of Doc’s brain that was being constantly assaulted by the nearness of the thing he wanted and could _not_ have. 

Robert had been unfair; leaving mixed messages like eating the offerings and destroying the wallow. He shouldn’t have gone back. He shouldn’t have stayed here. He shouldn’t have let that wriggling bit of curiosity in his gut make his choices for him. Fucking Wyatt on the floor like he did, smelling like Doc on every inch of his skin, that had been as stupid as eating the rabbit had been.

He couldn’t do anything about the past. He didn’t know what he planned to do about the future. In the meantime, he was left with the current moment, soaking in the hotel’s overheated bath. The tomatoes had lessened the smell, the river had washed the red stain off his skin, and he’d slept out in the grass with the wind blowing through his fur until the last bit of the smell _finally_ started to fade. 

“Young man!” sounded like the lovely woman that had offered him a meal as soon as he finished soaking. Her voice was chasing through a crashed-open door, and the stumble-fumble-fall of footsteps coming from behind him. 

“It’s important!” 

Hiring Dowdy had been an impulsive choice when his pride was still stinging from how Doc had shoved him into a wall. He couldn’t swear he _actually_ wanted to know when Doc went off and did something else stupid, but now that his guilt had settled, he was glad he’d bothered.

“He’s fine,” Robert said.

Dowdy wasn’t wearing shoes, but leaving muddy footsteps between the sloshed water and the dirt on his feet. He was smiling, staring mostly at Robert’s body through the murky water filling the tub. “Well hello,” was not directed to his face at all, “I’m sorry to interrupt you while you’re naked but you did say that it was important that I find you if I thought Doc Holliday was going to do something really stupid. We didn’t clarify about what stupid constituted, so I’ve just been guessing that you meant something that might end with someone getting killed. Well, nobody’s in danger of dying right now except _maybe_ the Sheriff. Can you even arrest a marshal? Didn’t Wyatt deputize Doc? Can you arrest someone that’s been deputized?”

“Doc’s been arrested?”

“What?” Dowdy asked. He looked at Robert if only because if he kept staring down into the tub it was going to get _weird_ (er). Or maybe he looked up because Robert was pulling himself to sit up straight half on his way out of the tub. “Oh, yes sir. He’s very drunk. I didn’t hear it or see it but I heard from one of the men who said that he was in the building at the time that--”

“Dowdy,” Robert said.

“Sir?”

“Leave.”

The boy seemed _surprised_ by the command. His hands rubbed on his empty pockets and he turned like he was going to move, and then twisted back to keep looking at him, and then turned away again. “Well, I guess I’ll just come back when you’re wearing your clothes to get my pay.”

\--

Dowdy was standing by the door of the dusty little shack they called a sheriff’s office. He didn’t even have the good grace to look like he hadn’t been waiting solely to get the few coins he’d been promised for being a good messenger. “You’re smelling very fresh, sir. Only a little bit of skunk,” he said with his sticky palm out and waiting for his pay. He closed his hand around coins as soon as they landed in his palm and then took off running without so much as a thank you. 

The inside of the sheriff’s office was a scarcely lit, dusty square of space half-taken up with a cage made of iron bars. There wasn’t even a bench inside the bars to sit on so Doc was leaning against the bars at one side drinking out of a flask that he almost _certainly_ was not meant to have. 

Sheriff Perry was sitting at his desk by the opposite wall, turned sideways so he could properly watch Doc. He had all the impotent rage of any human faced with a problem that couldn’t be solved without violence. Maybe, if Sheriff Perry had an infinite amount of time, he might have found a punishment that was going to leave any sort of impression on Doc, but with the limited time he had, the best he could manage was _inconveniencing_ the man. 

Doc’s nose wrinkled up as soon as Robert stepped into the building. His lip curled as his throat did all the work of swallowing. “I sincerely hope Wyatt is doing more than just paying you, as thorough as you are being in attending to his affairs while he is out of town.”

Wyatt _was_ doing more than paying him, but just judging from how little Doc thought of Robert, probably not what was being hinted at. 

“Excuse me,” Robert said as he pulled his hat off his head, “Sheriff Perry, I’ve come to…” What had he come to do? “I can take Doc, I’ll take full responsibility for anything he does.”

Doc snorted. He shook the flask he’d been holding, and finding it empty, shoved it back into his pocket. He rolled away from where he’d been leaning against the bars to stick his arms through the bars in front of him. “I do not require any man to take responsibility for me, least of all a furry little coward like you.”

Sheriff Perry looked at Robert like an echo of those very words. But his knuckles were white-and-tight because Doc had _undoubtedly_ already been saying the stupidest things he could think of. A man could only be asked to put up with so much before he started thinking about how to excuse himself for shooting an unarmed man. “You’re a friend of Wyatt Earp?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He was not speaking to you,” Doc said.

Robert drew in a breath (and he could smell _blood_ ) before he turned to look at Doc more fully. “He _was_ speaking to me.”

“Now,” Sheriff Perry said, “I would let Wyatt take responsibility for him. I know Wyatt, hell all of us lawmen know Wyatt. That’s the sort of man that you can trust to do anything, and just about the only man I know that can handle a situation like the one we find ourselves in. But you,” Perry shook his head, “I don’t know you.”

That complicated things. Robert ignored how Doc snorted in amusement. He looked at his hat caught between his anxious fists, and he turned it once, and then twice. There wasn’t a lot that _Robert_ the meek and useless, could really do about the situation he found himself in. This was the sort of thing that required bigger men to settle. 

Of course, Robert was an illusion that he wore the way he wore his human skin. It wasn’t _really_ him. He set the hat on the sheriff’s desk as he let out the breath he’d been holding. If he they’d been alone, he might have tried _growling_ because nothing was as unsettling as a man that could growl like an animal. 

Even if Doc was drunk, he wasn’t drunk _enough_ to forget what he was hearing. Robert didn’t have that animal magnetism that kept men and women flocking to Doc like flies on shit. He’d never had that, not even among other wolves, but what he did have was just as useful. He didn’t have to do more than settle his unblinking stare on the Sheriff, let his body do all the work of making itself look bigger. He could look like a monster wrapped up in human clothes when he needed to because humans had an instinctive fear of anything with too many teeth and Robert had a mouthful of teeth made for eating a man. 

“I’m taking Doc,” he said again, but it wasn’t a question or a request, and therefore could not be denied. 

Poor Sheriff Perry was caught up in a terrible moment, hanging onto mortal arrogance and shivering in mortal fear. The fear _always_ won. Perry was shaking the keys in his hand as he got to his feet, “if you want him so bad, take him,” sounded like a punishment, “but I’ll have you both in this cell if I catch either of you doing anything I do not like.”

Robert picked up his hat, “of course, sir. Of course, I’ll take him right home.”

\--

Getting Doc from the Sheriff’s office to his own front door proved to be a remarkably easy feat. All it took was ignoring every single thing the man said (and he did say quite a few things). While Doc was following after him calling him a coward and insulting his taste in clothes, and the unkempt nature of his beard, Robert was walking them right to his front door. 

By virtue of luck or some drunken sense of discretion, Doc managed _not_ to say, “tell me exactly what sort of _errands_ Wyatt has you doing for him. I bet there’s one of two of them that don’t even require you to leave the house,” until they were both crowded into the open doorway of his room. The words were hissed so low and so close to Robert’s face that nobody could have heard them but him. 

They were a bold thing for a man to say when he was rubbing all over a man in such a way as to leave his smell on every inch of skin. Robert wasn’t even so thorough. Rather than try to deflect the question, he just pushed Doc gently into the room. 

“You do not need to be so coy with me,” he said, and it was the first thing he’d said that wasn’t _meant_ to be insulting. “Wyatt has a nose for men like you. He’ll sniff one of you out everywhere he goes. I understand,” he picked up a series of bottles until he found one that had enough liquor left in it to keep in his hand. “ _Discretion_ is part of the deal.”

Robert _should_ walk away. He’d done what he set out to do. Doc was back in his room and from the way he collapsed onto his own bed with the bottle clutched up to his ribs, he wasn’t going to be leaving it any time soon. 

But he’d seen the wallow after Doc had finished destroying it. He’d seen how deep those gouges ran into the tree. He’d been watching Doc looking for anything that would bring him a moment’s calm since the start. The blanket was supposed to give him some solace, but a man at peace wouldn’t have been drinking himself into a stupor. (Considering how much liquor it took to get wolves properly drunk, that was quite a feat.) 

“You’re bleeding,” Robert said.

Doc shrugged. He lifted his left arm to squint at his coat sleeve, but even if he were bleeding he couldn’t have seen it. “Got in a fight,” he mumbled.

“You shouldn’t be so careless.”

“You shouldn’t be so cheap,” Doc rolled onto his side with the bottle still pressed up against his chest. “Wyatt always moves on.”

Robert pushed the door closed. He shrugged out of his coat and left it lying across the back of the chair off to the side of the room. Doc hadn’t even managed to get his boots off so he just had his feet hanging off the side of the bed. “You’re very bothered about this.”

Doc hummed in response. He barely opened his eyes when Robert pulled his boots off, and even then it was only to eye him suspiciously. 

“You don’t think it’s possible that I’m using him?” Robert caught Doc by the elbow to pull him back up to sitting. The man was _heavy_ because he wasn’t helping, not even once he was sitting up straight. He did nothing but shift his grip on the bottom from one side to the other. Without his coat to mask the smell, the odor of blood was bright and fresh. There were spots of it soaking through his shirt sleeve. 

“I think,” Doc did focus on him then, “Wyatt would shoot you in a heartbeat if he thought it would save his own ass.” Then he cracked a smile as he wilted back onto the bed. “I would not worry about it. He’s very discrete.”

Robert folded Doc’s coat over the end of the bed. He didn’t have to do more than stand still and breath. Between the skunk and the perfumes he’d picked up at the hotel, his scent was covered enough that it wasn’t immediately recognizable. (Even less so to a drunken nose.) But comfort wasn’t so single-layered. Robert was _here_ , he was in the room, and he wasn’t leaving. Even if Doc didn’t know who (what) he was, that animal part of him that was howling for a respite from the agony of being _alone_ knew. 

Doc fell asleep with a sigh, and Robert sighed with him. 

This was one hell of a fucked up situation he’d gotten them into. It was his fault for forgetting how strong that urge to stay with the pack was; for underestimating what it would be like for a wolf who had never had a pack to start with. 

Robert waited until he was sure that Doc was sleeping deeply before he went around the bed to crawl into it behind him. He didn’t have a solution for the long term. He wasn’t ready to be found out, but it wasn’t fair to do nothing either. He pressed their backs together and Doc hummed a noise like a whimper in his sleep and rolled over. The bottle he’d been hugging hit the ground because he had his arm around Robert’s body and his face pressed into Robert’s back. 

\--&\--

Doc had not expected to wake up hungover (he was not even sure what it meant to be ‘hungover’) but he certainly _had_ expected to wake up human. Transformations were not the sort thing that, prior to this exact moment, he would have thought a man could sleep through. He would qualify the shift from human to wolf as a very long, deep stretch. It didn’t hurt but it pulled on his muscles in a way that was _memorable_. 

For that matter, he could not remember a single time that he had been able to so much as _start_ shifting into a wolf without having to concentrate on the _desire_ to be one. Doc’s nighttimes had been filled up with dreams of wanting for weeks but he couldn’t remember _anything_ about the night before except that Robert had pulled off his boots--

Robert.

The meek man in ugly red plaid that had finally found something less ungodly than a skunk’s ass to smell like. Of course the fog of perfume that he’d left behind in Doc’s room didn’t necessarily qualify as something he _wanted_ to smell but at least it didn’t make his head ache. 

Doc stretched the length of his wolf body, all tangled up in yesterday’s clothes. His suspenders were stuck around his chest and one of his legs had worked its way out through his shirt front. The pants were twisted up sideways on his back legs with his tail uncomfortably caught in one of the pants legs. As crooked as they were, he was going to have to wriggle out of them before he turned back into a man. 

For now he pressed his wolf face into his bed and clung to the relief of a good night’s sleep. A more curious man might have tried to work out what the winning combination of factors was. But Doc was happy enough to know that he’d found _anything_ that let him sleep. 

(Well, anything else other than that blanket in a den in the woods.)

His lazy (morning?) was interrupted by a sudden pounding on his door. Even before the shout through the door, there was only _one_ man that it could have been. “Doc!” Wyatt sounded as fresh as a daisy; not the sort of sound of a man who was going to let a shut door stop him. 

Of course human instinct made him jerk upright, but how his legs were trapped in his clothes knocked him back over. He opened his mouth like he had a throat that could say, _just a minute_. And he only remembered that he _didn’t_ at the last second, when his throat was building up a bark that would have been mighty hard to explain. 

Now he could have shifted back but it would have done terrible things to his clothes. It seemed like it would qualify as unpleasant to the body parts that were all in the wrong places as well. Wyatt was already getting impatient after only a second without an answer, so Doc did the best thing he could do and threw himself off the side of the bed not visible from the door. 

It gave him a precious few seconds to wriggle out of his pants and get the shirt almost entirely onto his neck. That way he was back to human butt-naked but at least lying on the floor without his clothes on was something he _could_ explain. 

“Where the devil are you?” Wyatt asked the empty room.

Doc pulled his shirt and vest the rest of the way off and sat up. “Now, I am sure your Mother taught you to wait to be invited before you entered a man’s private residence.”

Wyatt had a smile for a schoolboy on his face. Maybe he’d been thinking this was a game they were going to play, that Doc was hiding so he could be found. Only there he was sitting up on the other side of the bed, looking completely naked as far as any man could tell. Wyatt had never been subtle about his attraction to men. He’d never been able to deny that he did think Doc was _very_ attractive but he hadn’t ever smelled of outright lust. 

“I am sure your Mother taught you to wear clothes.”

Doc rested his bent elbow on the mattress and cocked up an eyebrow at that very weak reply. “That is a very bold and obviously incorrect assumption to make, Wyatt. Now if you would please turn around so I can make myself presentable.” (And maybe do something about the wolf fur all over his bedding.) 

“I’ve heard some rumors about what you were doing while I was gone,” Wyatt said with his back turned to Doc. His hands must have been straightening his clothes because his elbows kept twitching. “I confess, I couldn’t bring myself to believe all of them. They were _outlandish_.”

Oh, just not as outlandish as the truth, most likely. Doc shook out his pants as he got to his feet. The shirt was stretched out in a way that would require a wash to be fixed. Wyatt had seen him shirtless often enough that it wouldn’t even be considered scandalous. “Now come on, Wyatt,” he said, “when have you known me to be _outlandish_?”

Wyatt had a little boy’s laugh when he thought something was ridiculous. It was nervous this time, pitched to a point of being almost giggly. He turned his upper body so he was looking at Doc while still having his back facing him. “Just about as long as I’ve known you.”

“To what do I owe this early morning honor?” Doc asked. He pulled the suspenders up onto his shoulders so the pants wouldn’t slide off his hips. His extra shirt was on the other side of the room. That was just fine when Wyatt was going to keep turning in circles to make sure he didn’t miss a moment of seeing Doc.

“It’s noon, Doc.”

“To what do I owe this noon-time honor?”

Wyatt rolled his eyes at that. “I got back into town this morning. I was waiting for you to show up for breakfast but you never did, so I figured I would come and make certain you were still alive. Some of those things that I heard you did were superhuman feats.”

So Wyatt had heard that he fucked himself to death and thought _that_ was unbelievable. The bit about it killing him was hard to believe, but the fucking was most likely accurate as reported.

“I would love for you to buy me lunch.” He shook out his clean shirt as Wyatt tried to frown at him. “I assume you have some fun stories with which you can entertain a crowd and I would love to hear the facts as they are before they get inflated by the retellings.”

“You think I inflate my deeds on retelling?”

“Oh never,” Doc assured him. (But he did.) “Not a man of your character.”

Wyatt laughed again, his eyes were all full of sparkles. “I’ve missed you, Doc.” 

\--

Doc had fallen out of tune with the phases of the moon. He hadn’t been paying attention because he’d been knocked off balance. Sitting opposite Wyatt telling him about _weeks_ of adventure. Weeks, as in through the waning moon, through the new moon, and back into the waxing moon. 

The waxing moon explained the energy in his limbs _now_. It accounted for how hungry he was and how very little he wanted to eat the food that was put in front of him. It even explained (or helped to explain) how he craved the violence of a good fight. Everything leading up to the full moon had always brought about a certain level of madness, like his skin was going to split at every crease just to make space for the wild thing living beneath it. 

But nothing else could be explained. He was pressing his fingers into his thigh under the table while Wyatt talked, counting back days to his overnight stay at the bordello. Full moons gave him the energy to do sexual miracles, but nearly every single new moon he’d ever spent in his life had been lying in a heap on his own bed wishing that he had the excuse to sleep earlier. 

New moons left him feeling like, what he assumed, humans felt like all the time. 

“Doc,” Wyatt said. His voice was sharp as a slap and even his arm was halfway to reaching out like he was going to shake him. 

Doc let out a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding. His hand relaxed out of the clenched fist he couldn’t swear he remembered making. Every part of his body relaxed out of a deep tense and he cleared his throat, “what?”

Wyatt wasn’t going to say that he was _worried_ but it was on his face. He just leaned back into his chair like it didn’t matter because they were in the company of men who carried rumors like beasts of burden. He said, “What do you think about Purgatory?”

“You don’t want to get involved in Purgatory,” Doc said. Only dead men went to Purgatory. Doc was _something_ but he sure as hell wasn’t _dead_.

\--

Wyatt had done all the work coming up with an excuse about how he needed to go somewhere and do some(one). He was regretful but a long day in the saddle and he was just ready to rest his head. Doc didn’t need the excuses, but he was very gracious about letting Wyatt go early. 

A man had needs, after all. As adorable as Wyatt could be, Doc had something of a policy about not fucking his only friend. It was just a matter of good politics. Of course, Wyatt had never _said_ anything to him so they were all just pretending like Wyatt didn’t go and fuck men.

At the moment, the least of Doc’s concerns was how Wyatt needed to get laid. 

Waking up as a wolf had seemed like his biggest concern that morning, but he needed _answers_ about all the things he’d been doing that shouldn’t have been possible at the times he’d been doing them. It felt like there was something _living_ inside of him that wasn’t fully wolf or fully human and it was _starving_ for something he couldn’t feed it. That thing was scratching its way to the outside, and he’d been beating it back with fighting and fucking and drinking.

But waking up transformed into a wolf just proved that it had gone beyond his ability to control. The other wolf didn’t want anything to do with him, that was _fine_. They didn’t have to be friends, but Doc _needed_ to know. 

(And just this once, if only this _once_ , he didn’t want to have to figure it out himself.)

He sat at the highest point in the woods he could reach on four paws and he _howled_ until his throat was _sore_. 

\--&\--

Robert had not been hiding; there was simply nothing that he needed to do into town. Maybe he did need a few minutes to absorb the quiet of the day so far removed from humans. Maybe he needed to work out what the hell he was even doing with Doc. 

Yesterday it had felt like the only option he had was to _leave_ ; but last night he’d let himself be pulled into Doc’s body as he slept. Not even Robert was capable of denying the simple, vital comfort of being so close to another of your own kind. Maybe humans felt it too in their own way, but it couldn’t have been as powerful for them as that impulse was to Doc and him. All the way he laid there, he was telling himself that he was only staying to settle Doc down.

It was all for Doc’s benefit.

But extracting himself from the man’s grip had been almost as terrible as walking away from his pack. He _had_ forgotten what it felt like to be so close to another like him. He _had_ forgotten how warm it was, and how safe, and how _needed_. 

Of course none of that changed anything, but it made it _harder_ to walk away. It made it almost impossible to even think about walking away. That was half the reason almost nobody ever left a pack. If you didn’t die from starving to death, the loneliness would take you out sooner or later. (Most likely sooner.)

Robert had accomplished nothing but sitting on his front porch and talking himself in circles the whole of the day. He was still working through the same issue when Wyatt showed up in his yard covered in dust. “Wyatt,” he said, “I didn’t expect you for at least another day. Your letter said…”

“I finished earlier than I thought I would.” Wyatt didn’t go through the trouble of taking the saddle off his horse and that meant he wasn’t planning on staying very long at all. “I didn’t figure you’d mind if I was a little earlier than expected.”

“I’m always pleased to see you,” he said. Of course, seeing Wyatt invariably meant fucking Wyatt, which was only _presently_ a problem because humans weren’t known for their hygiene habits and there was absolutely no method he knew of to mask the smell of his cum on (or in) Wyatt. “Did you want…” Robert had absolutely nothing anywhere near him that he could offer.

Wyatt smiled and it was breathlessly honest. “I do want,” he said, “if you’re willing.”

Well, it wasn’t as if he was going to be able to keep his secret much longer anyway. Doc wasn’t enough of a fool to keep himself from figuring out the obvious much longer anyway. If Robert was going to announce himself, he might as well do it in a way that was _fun_ for him. “For you,” he said as he got to his feet, “always.”

That was what he preferred to think of as a sweet nothing than an outright lie. Wyatt didn’t want him forever; he only wanted Robert exactly when, how it was convenient for Wyatt. “I want to thank you for helping out Doc while I was out of town,” Wyatt said, “I heard from a few men that…”

One of Wyatt’s most stringent rules was that they couldn’t be _seen_ to be any more than meek Robert the mail sorting sycophant and Wyatt Earp the righteous lawman. Robert stepped into Wyatt’s space as his attempt to be gracious stuttered on his tongue. He didn’t touch the man at all but push his door open. 

The deepening smell of lust coming from Wyatt wasn’t a surprise, but the faintness of Doc’s scent was. If Wyatt had been in town (and he evidently had been), he should have been covered in Doc’s smell how he had been the last time they met. 

(Now that was interesting.)

\--

Robert had not managed to get dressed fast enough for Wyatt. They had developed the habit of standing outside of his little house and exchanging small talk about the weather and their plans for dinner and whatever else sprang to mind when neither of them had anything at all to say. This time, Wyatt had jumped back into his clothes almost as soon as he caught his breath and made a great deal of excuses about how he had to go.

Things to do. Long day. He was so tired.

Neither of them owed the other any sort of excuses, but that never seemed to stop Wyatt from the pretense. Robert didn’t hear exactly what he said (so he was guessing) because he’d only just noticed the smear of blood on his vest from the night before. Doc’s arm _had_ been bleeding and pressing it as tightly as he had against Robert’s chest must have opened the wound wider. Laying in bed next to him, there were too many smells to separate one from the other. The blood had dried into his clothes and he’d been too distracted by his thoughts to notice the scent of it until Wyatt’s hand had rubbed over it. 

Blood was a strong scent, it gave away half your secrets with a single drop. There was much more than a drop on his vest. Robert had already worked out what he thought were most of Doc’s important secrets. How he’d been born without a pack. How he was a wanderer. How he was lonely and looking for _anyone_ else like him. But this, the richness of his scent, was so inviting it was damn near intoxicating. 

The very scent of it, now that his attention had been drawn to it, was singing sweet promises to him. All he had to do was hold the vest closer to his face, and draw the smell in deeper. Human noses weren’t built like a wolf’s. They couldn’t pick up the fine details. It was like hearing someone speak from around a corner, you could _almost_ work out the shape of the words just by the cadence of speech. He could _almost_ figure out this smell. 

But the taste across his tongue when he pressed it into the smear, oh the _taste_ left no room for confusion. Robert had barely had time to drag the full flat of his tongue across the streak before he threw the vest across his empty house. He moved back by instinct, pushing himself across his sorry little bed until he was falling into the gap between the wall and mattress. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted. 


	3. Chapter 3

Wyatt had a unique ability to reduce the volume of laughter in a room to a murmur. All the work that Doc had put into entertaining the crowd that had amassed around him at the poker table was unceremoniously ruined by Wyatt coming to a full stop to the left of the table, just behind the man most likely to give up his seat. 

Even Sarah (the most patient woman to ever come back for seconds) tensed up where her arm was laying across Doc’s shoulders. She’d been doing her part of entertaining the crowd by bending over every so often so any man facing the right direction got a good view of her ample breasts. Wyatt had a method of repulsing any woman that actually enjoyed her life. It might have been the sternness of his stare, and it might have been his reputation but Doc was of the personal opinion it was just that they knew he was a waste of their time.

“Have you come to join us?” Doc asked. He had anticipated his friend finding him after his talk of Doc’s strange behavior, and he’d made sure he never had more than one glass of liquor sitting next to him. There was no way to know how much he had already drank because his body was burning it off faster than he could pour it in. He needed _bottles_ of it just to maintain a comfortable buzz.

Wyatt’s hand slapped on poor George’s shoulder as he said, “if there’s space for me.”

George was a smart man but he was also twice as meek as Robert, so he slid out of his seat without being directly asked anything with a gracious motion of his arms. “I needed to be getting back home,” he said (but he didn’t).

Sarah’s fingers pulled out of where they’d been idly twisting the hair at the nape of his neck. He’d been enjoying the warmth of her so close to him and the smell of her desire distracting him from the unwashed stink of his fellow men. Humans just didn’t seem to understand the concept of a clean body, at least not well enough to make it a priority. Of course, they also weren’t the sort to fling themselves fully naked and fur-covered into a river any time they pleased either. “Looks like your dance card is full,” she said softly as she moved away. “Find me when you’ve got time.” 

“Poker’s not a woman’s game,” Wyatt said. Jealousy made every man a touch more ugly, but it twisted Wyatt’s decent face into something horrendous. It wasn’t scary but it was still an awful sight to look at. 

Of course, all the men sitting in a circle around the table were laughing because it made them feel special. Doc gripped his whiskey glass with the tips of his fingers, leaning back into his chair as it spun it half around. “Do remind me,” Doc said, “the name of that beautiful young lady that beat you at the tables down in Cody?”

“Your definition of beauty has always confused me, Doc.” That was because Wyatt’s definition of beauty involved mostly dicks and Doc had never seen the point in limiting himself in any fashion. Wyatt was smiling to himself as he scored another laugh _and_ the waitress delivered him a drink he hadn’t even ordered. 

Doc’s jaw was clenched too tight to let him come up with a worthwhile response. He was still marinating in last night’s disappointment, nursing his still sore throat and _trying_ to drown his sorrows in meaningless human delights. He _liked_ Wyatt, but he’d been pissed off since the man walked into the bar and he couldn’t put his finger on _why_ until he dragged in a lungful of air through his nose. 

Mixed in with so many other flavors, being smelled with his tongue as much as his nose, that new smell that Wyatt carried in was only moderately noticeable. But now the man was sitting to his left, smirking to himself about how he’d been so clever, all the while unaware that he was _covered_ in another man’s scent. It was rising away from his body so strongly there was absolutely no masking it.

“Beauty is all in the eye of the beholder, Wyatt. Perhaps you should not concern yourself with my definition of beauty and focus more on your own. After all, one of us is _well known_ amongst women of all types and one of us,” he didn’t finish the thought but motion dismissively to the side.

Wyatt took a civil drink and set the glass down. “Some men have higher standards. Were we going to play?”

Doc took a drink. It wasn’t going to do a damn thing to drown out the smell of the wolf rubbing all over Wyatt. It certainly wasn’t going to make him forget that all the while he’d been out in the woods begging for any sort of answers, the _wolf_ had been fucking Wyatt. It must have been a mediocre fuck from the dullness of the smell. (Either that or Doc’s appetite and ability when it came to sex was not typical.) 

He barely paid attention to the round, he hardly noticed who won (only that it wasn’t him). He nodded along with the sound of the players' voices; he made sure he was looking approximately where the sound was coming from. He hadn’t done a good enough job following the conversation because they’d all gone quiet as they looked at him. 

“Have a long night, Doc?” Wyatt asked with a laugh in his voice, “you look half-asleep.”

“That’s good for us!” one of the men said. The others were giggling along. 

“I do not believe it is your concern what I do with my evenings, Wyatt. Perhaps if you’re very curious, you should send along that little errand boy of yours. What’s his name, Robert? He seemed _very_ interested in me while you were gone.” Doc had a smile that made a man think of something _dirty_ and he liked to save it for special occasions. 

Wyatt wasn’t squirming because above all things, he was a terribly brave and unyielding man, but his skin did heat up under his clothes. He was rolling his eyes at Doc’s _antics_ on the outside but his whole body was flushed with a fresh fear. Because Robert was _not_ a bold man, and he _was_ hiding things. It wouldn’t take this whole crowd of men half-a-breath to decide that what Robert was hiding was a secret love of cock. 

(It wouldn’t even be a lie.)

“He was looking after you,” Wyatt said, “from what I heard you needed the help.”

“There are many things that I consider myself to need, a good glass of whiskey, a reasonable number of bullets and a beautiful woman when I’ve got the urge. What I have _never_ needed is another man to _look after me_.” Doc picked his hat up as he got to his feet. Wyatt was watching him with enough anger on his face to make his cheeks turn pink. “If you’ll excuse me, gentleman.”

\--

Doc had not been _waiting_ but Wyatt still showed up exactly on time. He interrupted Doc pacing from one end of his little room to the other. There was no polite knocking this time; there wasn’t even the pretense of anything one might consider friendship. Wyatt didn’t slam the door because that would draw too much attention to him and how he was letting himself into another man’s house.

“What in the name of…” Wyatt hissed at him as soon as the door was shut. He was smaller than Doc was (in just about every possible way) but that didn’t stop him from trying to look bigger. He was up on the balls of his feet just to match Doc’s height. He was good-old-days furious; the kind of mad you had to be to hunt a man down like an animal. 

If Wyatt hadn’t swept into his room still smelling like the wolf, maybe Doc wouldn’t have wrapped his hands in the man’s clothes and shoved his back against the nearest wall. Maybe he wouldn’t have pushed his knuckles into Wyatt’s chest just under his shoulders, maybe he wouldn’t have leaned so close to him their noses were kissing. “Do you fuck him?” 

“What?”

“ _Robert_ ,” Doc snapped, “do you fuck him?”

They both knew about Wyatt’s preferences, but they’d never _talked_ about it. Wyatt didn’t have an answer for him that could be shaped into a word because he couldn’t figure out _why_ it mattered. He couldn’t figure out in that split second if he wanted to mount a denial or claim his conquest. He was nodding though, because Wyatt was a mostly honest man. 

Doc kissed him and Wyatt’s hands grabbed him around the ribs. He was _startled_ , but he wasn’t _offended_. No Wyatt’s mouth opened against his as his head tipped to make it _easier_ to lick at the taste of his dinner. 

It was too difficult to work out _what_ he was feeling; the whole jumble of thoughts in his head was a rage of noise and motion. The only thing he _did_ know was that Robert had _known_ who he was; that he had known all this time. He’d covered himself in a smell so foul he couldn’t be detected. 

Doc could smell him _now_. He’d known Wyatt for _years_. He’d always known what turned Wyatt on. He’d always known the option was there, and he’d never even considered fucking the man because you just didn’t have sex with your friends. Not unless you wanted a tangled up situation with no resolution. 

And here he was, digging his teeth into Wyatt’s skin through the folded collar of his shirt as his hands pulled until the buttons started popping. Wyatt had his head tipped back and his hands on Doc’s hips pulling him forward until they were grinding against one another. 

“Doc!” Wyatt hissed, “don’t rip my clothes.”

“Take them off,” he said. He’d already stripped down to the last layer of his clothes, so it was just a matter of suspenders and buttons to get to his skin. 

Wyatt was moving too _slowly_ , spending half his time staring at Doc that could be used removing his clothes. 

Doc was _naked_ when he slid back up against Wyatt’s body. His hand wrapped around Wyatt’s throat to feel his heart racing as he tried to swallow back the sudden gasp of arousal and worry that made his whole body shiver. “I promise,” he whispered against Wyatt’s open mouth, “I feel even better than I look and you would know that,” his tongue ran the length of Wyatt’s jaw, “if you were not wearing clothes.”

Wyatt was staring at as his fingers worked on his own buttons. His body was quivering with desire but he was making _progress_ at last. 

“Now,” Doc whispered, “how do you like it? I am a giving man, I will let you decide the first time.”

“First?” Wyatt whispered as his unhurried effort to get undressed finally started to speed up. Every layer he peeled off made the smell that Robert left behind get stronger. That was _fine_ ; Doc was going to make it go away.

\--

“John Henry, “ Wyatt _whined_. It wasn’t a sexy impersonation of a whine, but the exact sort of sound you’d only hear from a child. Even as out of place as it was; even as inappropriate to be heard inside the fog of sex-stink they’d made, it didn’t dim the unbearable nearness of Doc’s next orgasm. 

Wyatt was on his back because he’d given up on holding his own body up one or two turns ago. He’d abandoned his attempts to keep from bashing his head on the wall at some point, so his hands were holding onto Doc’s shoulders like he wasn’t certain if he was trying to push him away or pull him closer. Either option must have seemed like they would get a man to _stop_ if you put enough effort into it. Wyatt was sweat-slicked everywhere, like he’d been sleeping in a furnace. His moustache was flattened to his skin and his hair was leaving a puddle shape on Doc’s bed.

“Are you finished?” Wyatt panted. He had been finished shortly after they started so there was no telling why he hadn’t called the whole thing off. This was the first time he’d just _given_ up in the middle of getting fucked. The other times he’d gasped in surprise but he’d kept urging Doc on. 

Doc wasn’t looking at Wyatt’s face, but at the strips of his cum sticking to Wyatt’s belly. They hadn’t dried because there was too much sweat making them run and spread across his skin. A man could get distracted thinking about things like that. About pressing the flat of their hand across those milky white strips and spreading them until they went so thin they were absorbed. The smell he’d already left on Wyatt wasn’t going to wash off even _with_ soap. He could have kept going, spreading his cum all over the man until even the humans could smell it. 

“Yes,” he said when he remembered he’d been asked a question.

“Completely?” Wyatt gasped. 

If he had to be. 

\--&\--

Robert was _adjusting_ to the reality that was laid out before him. He’d gotten too arrogant in the human world; too used to always having an upper hand that the humans couldn’t even comprehend to be true. It was easy as pie to play a meek and mild man when you knew that you could kill every man in the crowd if you set your mind to it. Robert was _not_ violent by any means, but that animal part of him didn’t care to distinguish between the ability and the willingness.

Reality, as it stood before him, was the sobering realization that no amount of running had allowed him to escape from the one thing he had _not_ wanted for himself. But also, there simply was no point in _running_ anymore. This new reality demanded that he come up with a more delicate plan. The first step of which was figuring out how to convince Wyatt they shouldn’t have sex anymore.

Somehow, Robert didn’t think: ‘it’s for your own safety,’ was really the sort of thing that would make complete sense to the man even if it was _true_. He’d considered suggesting that Wyatt leave town again, there were more than enough letters asking for help to come up with somewhere he could send the man until he figured out what he was going to do about Doc.

It had been a hopeful plan when he was alone in his house. Sitting at the table closest to the door of the best place to eat in town, waiting for Wyatt to _finally_ show up it seemed like a slightly too optimistic plan. 

They were meeting for lunch, but Wyatt had taken so long to arrive that Robert had been obliged to order his food or leave (even if he didn’t smell like a skunk anymore, the owner just did not like him). They’d served him overcooked beef and mushy potatoes; he didn’t want to eat either so they’d gone cold while he busied himself eating the bread first. 

By the time Wyatt _finally_ walked in, Robert had run out of reasons that he wasn’t eating. Nobody had asked him to explain himself, but it felt like he was being _watched_ nonetheless. 

Wyatt _looked_ ruffled. It wasn’t anything specific about him because his clothes and his hair and his face were all orderly. Maybe it was something in his eyes, like a spooked horse. Robert _had_ sent him out in the world with a noticeable scent, something he would _not_ have done if he’d known what he was dealing with. But he’d been counting on Doc to control himself around humans, especially his _best friend_. 

Robert sniffed the air to be certain that Wyatt hadn’t been _injured_. He was smelling for any fresh blood on the surface of his skin, or even that warm pool of it just beneath. Robert had been assuming that Doc was acting out of instinct of a wolf looking for a pack, and that had been a mistake. He had been a goddamn angel in comparison to some of the wolves that Robert had seen in the past but, he was only going to get less and less predictable.

Maybe he ought to have kept that in mind before he drew in such a deep lungful of smell. Maybe he should have waited until Wyatt had come closer, until the thick fog of sex-stink around him was obvious even if you didn’t try to smell it. As strong as that scent of cum was, he must have been _covered_ in it. It must have been _rubbed_ into skin. 

“Robert,” Wyatt said with more kindness than he usually used.

Robert normally would have stood up to greet him, but he couldn’t _move_. If he so much as flinched from where he was sitting he was going to-- 

What?

It was better to sit very still and not find out. (Better _not_ to imagine how long it must have taken to completely cover Wyatt’s body in cum.) 

Wyatt didn’t want to look like he was hurt by the impoliteness of Robert’s greeting so he pulled out the chair opposite him and sat (one might say gingerly). There was absolutely nothing funny about what had happened to Wyatt. He’d been all but _mauled_ by a wild animal. He didn’t smell like blood (not even a drop) which should have been _better_ but just from the hollow shock still filling up his eyes, maybe he would have preferred it if Doc had decided to vent his frustrations with his fists. “I had hoped that Doc would meet us here, but he has this notion that you would not be happy to see him. I had thought things were friendly between you but apparently he doesn’t agree.”

The problem was now that Wyatt was close enough to smell, it was _all_ that Robert could smell. He’d been holding a piece of meat in his mouth this whole time, because he’d forgotten to keep chewing it. Not even the taste of that was as strong. “Doc and I will be fine,” he said. Every word sounded like it had been strangled out of his tight throat. He cleared his throat and it did _nothing_ to steady his voice. “There was something you needed to talk about?”

Wyatt didn’t deserve to be laughed at and Robert didn’t want to laugh at him. But the longer he sat there, the more potent the smell got. Every time he breathed, he was reminded that Doc must have been some kind of mythical beast, something monstrous and unpredicted, slathering Wyatt--

“Excuse me,” Robert said before another word could be said. “I’m so sorry, Wyatt. Just excuse me a moment.”

He kicked back the chair he’d been sitting in and pressed his fist into his mouth as hard as he could to keep from making a _sound_ or even breathing. He didn’t breath again until he was outside. Even then, the scent lingered, and his eyes were _watering_ from how ridiculous and unfortunate and _awful_ it was. 

He didn’t stop walking until he was around the corner, until he could push both of his hands to cover his face and draw in the smell of his own skin. Until he had the empty air to whisper, “oh fuck,” until the world become _bearable_ again.

By the time he made it back to the door, Wyatt had already left the table. He was squinting into the sunshine, looking at him with neighborly concern. His smile didn’t sit right on his face when he said, “I’ve settled your bill. You don’t look well today, Robert. I think what I need to speak with you about requires your full attention and health so it can wait a few days. There’s a few things I need to sort out myself.”

“Alright,” he said because there was _nothing_ else he could say. “If you think that’s best.”

\--

While Doc did not have as strong a scent as Wyatt, he was easily identifiable even at a considerable distance. Even if Robert hadn’t been able to catch the swelling desperation in Doc’s scent on the breeze, he could smell those awful cigarillos he liked to smoke. From the thickness of the cloud of that stink around his home, Doc must have been sitting on the porch helping himself to one after another after another since Robert left that morning. 

The fact that Doc was sitting _outside_ his home showed more restraint than he might have expected from the man. Certainly it showed more restraint than half the wolves that had found themselves suffering the same affliction back in Robert’s pack. Wolves wouldn’t have even wasted their time with appearances; they showed up uninvited and undressed to claim what was rightfully theirs.

They didn’t sit on your front porch with their hat resting on their knee, looking peeved about being led-on while wispy gray smoke rolled out of their noses. They didn’t curl their lips into a smile that had no humor as their voice dragged itself through the words, “was there something that you may have been meaning to tell me, Robert?”

“I believe you got the message I sent you. At least it certainly smelled that way when I met Wyatt for breakfast.” He dismounted his horse before she started getting fidgety about how they were being stared at by a wild animal. It had taken him long enough to get her used to being around _him_ and he was almost nothing in comparison. “I have to take care of my horse.”

“By all means.”

Robert didn’t hurry because he was buying himself time. Every extra little minute gave him another sixty seconds to try and figure out how he was supposed to explain half the things that Doc didn’t appear to know about himself. He couldn’t even work out where to _start_ because there were at least two very important things that needed to be said and neither one of them was anything _Robert_ wanted to say.

Still, Doc hadn’t moved an inch regardless of how long Robert had been gone. He didn’t seem to be _bothered_ to have been kept waiting. His face didn’t have to show anything because his scent was _screaming_ his every hidden intention. Even if it weren’t, what he’d done to Wyatt was enough of an indication of the sort of things he wanted to do to Robert.

(Instinct was a _bitch_ when you didn’t know what you were doing.)

“I know you’ve never had a pack,” Robert said without getting too close, “but have you ever had any contact with wolves? Ever had anyone explain anything about what you are?”

Doc pulled the cigarillo out of his mouth and let it dangle carelessly from his lax hand hanging at his side. He ran his tongue across his lips as he said, “everything I know about _who_ I am, I figured out myself. I did not come here to have a conversation about who _I_ am, when it is obvious to me that you have been aware since the very beginning. I would like to know who _you_ are.”

Of course he would. Everything in Doc’s body from the speeding beat of his heart to his itchy palms to those bunching muscles in his thighs all wanted to know everything there was to know about _Robert_. Humans seemed to have a dozen different things they wanted to call it, but wolves only ever had the one. “I’m a wolf,” Robert said, “and I did _not_ want another pack.”

“I thought I detected a hint of the Lower Northwestern forest pack in your odor but even my meager understanding of the dynamics of wolf society has led me to believe that wolves do not simply walk away from their packs.”

“I did to get away from wolves like you,” Robert said.

Doc’s smile was all bright white teeth. His eyes were gleaming as he rumbled a noise that might have been a growl in any other throat. “Handsome?”

“You’re too skinny to be considered handsome where I’m from. I didn’t see you very well as a wolf, but I’m just guessing--long legs? Narrow chest? Probably really shaggy around your neck?”

Doc shrugged.

“You killed someone.” As far as Robert could see, there was no _good_ way to say the sort of thing he had to say. There certainly wasn’t an easy way to explain every aspect of a ritual of sacrifice and the resulting consequences without having to lay out the entire history of his pack. Hell, he would have to explain half the history of werewolves to even begin to offer an explanation of how they had come to even have the _ability_ to do what Doc had done by accident.

“You will need to be more specific. I have killed many men. Although, if that is a thing that bothers you, I do hate to be the one to tell you that Wyatt also has killed quite a few men.” He went through the elaborate show of tipping slightly to the side to stub out his cigarillo in the dirt before tossing it out into the grass.

“Has Wyatt eaten any of the men he killed? Consumed their hearts while they were still hot? Maybe a liver. Maybe a spleen?” It didn’t matter how many of the organs you ate beside the heart as long as you were the one that hunted down the human you were eating. Some wolves said they were gifted extraordinary powers by consuming extra parts but the oldest and wisest wolves said it didn’t matter in the end.

Doc’s smile eased off his face. His fingertips were barely resting on his hat, like he’d been set to stand up but he got caught in that moment. His jaw clenched as his breathing went deep and slow. He was scenting the air, figuring out Robert’s intentions by the smell of his skin. 

And all he could smell right now was a growing urge to be farther away. This was hardly the first time he’d been so close to a wolf like Doc, there had been more and _more_ of them in his pack. A whole generation of the young was coming into adulthood under the smug notion that they _deserved_ what they had to kill to get. 

“I didn’t intend to eat them,” Doc said when he finally said anything, “I did not even intend to kill them, however it did come down to a disagreement over who should live. I felt very strong that since I did not start out hunting them that I should be allowed to live.” He did move then, lifting his hat off his knee so he could get to his feet. He fixed his vest where it was fit so snugly around his slim waist it didn’t seem like there’d be any room for it to move. “I suppose you are about to tell me that I am a monster?”

Not quite. “No,” Robert said, “unholy, yes.” (Although after what Doc had done to Wyatt, there was nobody wolf or human that would doubt Doc’s holiness.) “A fearsome creature made of dark magic and blood sacrifice? Yes. You’re effectively immortal.”

Doc snorted at that, “you make it sound like a curse.”

“It cost you half your soul,” Robert said very quietly, “because of that, you have to have felt like you were always _looking_ for someone. They say that it feels like being hungry, no matter how much you eat. The longer it takes you to find a person compatible to you, the hungrier you get.” Which brought them to the most unfortunate thing that Robert wanted to say the _least_ , “that’s changed now. You’re not looking for just anyone. You’re not hungry for just _anything_ anymore. You’ve _only_ been looking for me.”

Any wolf that had been raised in a pack wouldn’t have kept his distance so long. They wouldn’t have exchanged a single word, much less an entire conversation. Any wolf that Robert had been raised with wouldn’t have looked _horrified_ because he would already have stripped Robert to the skin to sink his teeth in. Doc smirked like a reflex, looked down at the grass beneath his bare feet. 

“And if I don’t want to?” Doc asked.

“You don’t have a choice,” Robert said, “I don’t know how you’ve held out this long.”

Doc just nodded. He nodded as he shifted on his feet, as he fixed his hat so it was set right on his head. He was still nodding as he looked up to meet his eyes with a cringe of something that didn’t have a name on his face. “If you’ll excuse me.”

_What_.

But Doc didn’t actually want an answer, he just started walking out and _away_. As if any wolf had ever stood within grabbing distance of the thing they wanted and _not_ taken it.

\--&\--

Some facts were indisputable. 

Doc didn’t know a single thing about life in a pack other than it was the natural state of any wolf. There was a romantic notion of lone wolves, but he had a lifetime of longing to prove that romantic notions were full of shit. He couldn’t swear that he _had not_ been just as hungry, and just as insatiable, and just as _unholy_ before two hunters caught him running through the woods. Most of Doc’s early life was the sort of blurry that memories got when you stopped trying to recall them. 

He had barely been twenty years old when those men tried to shoot him just for his fur.

Who the hell could even _guess_ how different he was after when he’d barely been old enough to be _anything_ before. 

But the facts that could _not_ be disputed were the ones he was having the most trouble accepting. Robert spoke very deeply with weighted sincerity. He smelled like resignation and fresh worry. Even while he was swallowing against every word he said, Doc couldn’t shake the snarling hunger snaking out of his gut, invading all the parts of him with renewed desire to get _closer_.

It was hard to know who was more disappointed when Doc walked away: Robert or himself. 

He _did_ want him. Doc had been chasing the wolf since the first moment he’d smelled him. It had consumed him so thoroughly it was the only thing he thought about no matter what he was doing. All the fighting, fucking and card playing had only been a manner of stretching time to get through the day. 

Doc didn’t get half as far as he had wanted to get (which was very fucking far away) before his feet spun him back in a circle in the grass. He whipped his hat off his head because sometimes when you were angry it was just about the only gesture that really expressed how you felt. “If you knew, why would you send Wyatt back to me smelling like he did? Do you care so little for the man that you would use him as a telegram? Here I am, I am ready for the taking?”

Robert scoffed at that as he turned to face Doc. “I am not _ready for the taking_.”

“You used Wyatt.”

“Not half as many times as you did,” Robert snapped back. The crassness of his own statement seemed to embarrass him because he closed his eyes and lifted his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t know when I had sex with him that you were the sort of wolf that you _are_. I didn’t know until I licked your blood on my vest.”

“How did my blood end up on your vest?”

“I stayed with you the other night.”

Doc would have smacked him if he thought he could lay a hand on the man without also trying to strangle him. (That was only one of the many impulses he had. It was also the most violent of his daydreams but that was not a significant point.) “I do not recall such an event.”

Robert’s hands curled into almost fists. “You were drunk.”

“So you took advantage of me, and now here we are, but I am supposed to believe you that _I_ am the unholy creature and you are an innocent little victim that I will consume?” Now, that was a point he was _not_ entirely clear on. “And explain that to me again, what _exactly_ is it that I am hungry for? What exactly are you meant to provide for me and how am I meant to take it?”

Robert was _annoyed_ with him and it was one of the most delightful expressions he’d ever seen on the man’s meek and unremarkable face. It shifted the loose and defenseless stance of his body so he was hunching his shoulders like a wolf with all it’s hair standing on end. “I did not say that I was a victim.”

“You do not have to say the words,” Doc snapped back at him as he flourished a hand to demonstrate how timidly the man had stood there a moment ago talking like he was officiating his own funeral. “You have made the implication clear enough.”

“The only implication that I have made is that I do not _want_ to be in the situation that we are now in.”

“What situation is that? Because as you have very aptly pointed out, I do not know what is happening and you have done a shit job of explaining it to me. I am missing half my soul? I am possessed by black magic? I’m _immortal_. But how does that involve _you_. How are _you_ meant to satiate my hunger?”

Clearly the answer was meant to be obvious. Robert’s face was numb with offensive shock. He must have been calling Doc every version of stupid he could think up. When his mouth started moving, it sputtered out sounds that weren’t words until he’d worked around to snapping out, “what do you want to do to me?”

“At the moment? Slapping you does have a certain satisfying ring to it. I am not a man partial to slapping people but it is most certainly effective in communicating the level of anger I am experiencing.” Maybe after that, since he had his hands on Robert anyway, he’d see what his skin felt like. He’d wrap his arms around him and drag the full and unadulterated smell of him into his lungs. He could rub his skin all over Robert’s until they were sharing a single smell. But slapping him was still the most pressing need he had.

“No!” Robert closed his eyes as his fingers spread out in exaggerated rage and then he opened them again, “in order to bond us together and heal the damage to your soul, you have to _bite_ me.”

That didn’t seem _unreasonable_. It would be unpleasant for Robert more so than him. He’d bitten plenty of things in his life but it wasn’t a difficult or inherently awful thing to do when he had a whole wolf jaw that was meant for that sort of thing. 

“Then we’re bound together forever,” Robert added on like it was a _minor_ detail, “I’ll belong to you. We’ll never be able to get away from one another and we won’t want to.”

Well, as it turned out, Doc’s first idea was his best one. He said, “excuse me,” because being anywhere but _right here_ seemed like the best idea at the moment.

\--

Doc had left his clothes at the edge of the forest, folded into a bag and cleverly buried just deep enough they wouldn’t be found without effort. Life was simpler with an animal brain; everything was another shade of survival. 

Wolves didn’t waste too much time worrying about the implications of _ownership_ because the concept didn’t exist out in the wild. Or, at least, he didn’t think it did. Certainly that howling that he felt in his human skin wasn’t so loud inside his wolf brain. He could _think_ , curled into a well-formed tree root, with nothing but the sounds of the forest around him. 

Robert was as infuriating to listen to _now_ that his identity had been revealed as he’d been back when he was only masquerading as a meek and useless man. He knew more things about what they were than Doc could imagine, but his every explanation sounded like it was being dragged out of his throat by a boiled-hot hook. 

And what was that last bit.

That part about _belonging_ to Doc?

Why couldn’t Robert decide one way or another how he felt about it? Because his words were indications that he didn’t want to be bitten. He didn’t want to be owned by another man (and who the fuck did want that). He was summoning a low fog of fear that was _nothing_ compared to the obvious expectation that had tilted his body toward Doc’s. He didn’t even seem to understand that all the while he was complaining that he was telegraphing nothing but _invitations_.

Maybe Doc was seeing the things he wanted to see. But what sort of man who did _not_ want to be found, that did not want to be _possessed, spent_ an uninvited night in your bed? What kind of man announced himself by leaving his cum all over a mutual friend?

For that matter, who or _what_ had decided that Doc’s soul could only be healed by pairing it with Robert? That seemed like the sort of thing that a man ought to be able to decide for himself. It shouldn’t come down to a chance meeting on a full moon followed by almost a month of being taunted with the stomach-turning stench of a ripe skunk ass. He shouldn’t be _forced_ to settle for the first wolf he came across. 

And since he wasn’t given any manner of option or education, he most definitely shouldn’t be subjected to tender and unstable fears about _him_. Robert knew who the fuck he was, everyone knew who the fuck Doc Holliday was. Doc did _not_ know who Robert was. He didn’t know anything about him other than he’d rather smell like fermented shit than introduce himself to a stranger.

Doc was meant to be permanently tied to this man. He was meant to bind his soul to him?

Another thing that struck him as _unfair_ was the very idea that his soul could force him to make any such commitment. He’d gotten married on a whim, caught up in a whirlwind of sex and drugs and infatuation. It wasn’t his most well-thought out choice and it had ended prematurely but at _least_ it had been a choice. At least it hadn’t been made for him by a part of his person he barely believed in.

What Doc could not deny was that Robert was telling him the truth. Even now that he _knew_ , even when he would have expected the wanting to have waned, it was a growling throb beneath his skin. He had been _happier_ , despite the bullshit explanations, standing close enough to Robert to get his hands on him. He’d been almost at peace sitting outside his house, surrounded by the strength of his scent. 

Whatever was happening, whatever his _soul_ (if they must call it that) was screaming for, the answer was wrapped up in Robert’s infuriating body. Doc could dig up his back of clothes and excuse himself back to his room but it would be just another day of feeling out of control and unstable. 

No. All the answers were out here, so just as soon as he finished being _mad_ about it, he was going to have to go back.


	4. Chapter 4

Doc had been gone so long, Robert had assumed he must have gone back to town. That wasn’t the most _ideal_ solution to their present situation but he wasn’t going to hunt down the man and force him to come back. 

Honestly, it wouldn’t even have been worth his time to try, regardless of Doc’s incredible self-control, no wolf was capable of resisting. Robert hadn’t even seen a wolf try. They were more likely to show up at their fated mate’s den without an invitation and sink their teeth into bare flesh than they were to storm off toward the tree line.

Yes, by sheer technicality that he couldn’t _escape_ , Doc had become as much his problem as he had become Doc’s obsession. Everything that Doc did as a result of the unanswered yearning was at least partially Robert’s fault for hiding from him. Wolves in the territory could barely contain themselves for _moments_ after they smelled their mates, much less put up with that gnawing agony for almost a full month. 

Robert wasn’t _unaware_ of the fact that Doc was being tortured by instincts. He could be plenty aware of that fact and still _not_ want to have his soul be bound to the man. He had left the territory to ensure his freedom so his Mother must be _cackling_ somewhere.

The very last thing she’d said to him was, you can’t outrun fate. She’s a bitch and she’ll find you wherever you go.

Doc came back because he had about as much of a choice as Robert did. He just didn’t come back walking upright on two legs. He came back looking exactly how Robert thought he must have in wolf skin. His legs were so long they were almost funny looking, and he was slim-built with fur so full and shaggy it shivered as he walked. His coat was so dark it was basically black but his eyes were so vividly blue they could be seen at a distance. 

He was walking across the grass like it was _normal_ and _expected_ that a man-sized wolf would be delivering a mouthful of rabbit corpses. The man had grown up with human arrogance that allowed him to forget that they were _freaks_ in this world; that humans were _terrified_ by things they couldn’t quite explain. 

Robert mitigated human fear by presenting himself defenseless against them. Doc leaned into that fear, giving them every reason but the right one for how a shiver of something went down their spine when they saw him.

“You can’t just…” 

Doc spit the rabbit corpses out at his feet. There was blood drying into his fur, crusted around the edges of his mouth. His tongue was long and slippery, lapping his own jaws clean. He sat on his ass with his head cocked to one side. Even without a single word, his meaning was so plain Robert could almost _hear_ how he must have been thinking: _I brought you food_.

“You’re too kind,” Robert said. Also _reckless_ came to mind, there was no good reason for a wild animal to have delivered food to a human man. Maybe it was verging onto paranoid to worry about being found here when he hadn’t gotten a single visitor (except Wyatt) since he moved in. “What should I do with them?”

Doc cocked his head to the other side as his tail swished behind him. He lifted his body a half-space and sat back down in exactly the same way. When that didn’t answer the question he ducked down to push the rabbits with his nose.

“I don’t think you’re making as much sense as you think you’re making.” Wolf language only worked because they had all grown up together. It was as much about knowing the other wolf so well and half about a series of ear twitches and tail wags. You didn’t need to worry about so many words when thriving meant working together without them. 

Wolves could not roll their eyes but Doc managed to convey the same expression with his face. He grabbed the leaner of the two rabbits and trotted off toward the shade around the side of the building.

Robert wasn’t picky enough to turn down free food, especially when it was still blood-warm, but that didn’t mean that he _preferred_ rabbits. (Another thing that every wolf in the territory knew was how to hunt larger, tastier prey.) “If you bring that back around I’ll skin it for you.” 

Doc didn’t move immediately, but the sound of him trying to do the job himself went quiet. Robert grabbed the second carcass off the ground and carried it over to the skinning station he’d built into the side of the barn. It wasn’t much more than a board and some nails but anything that spared him a mouthful of fur was good by him. 

Doc followed him, pushing his body into Robert’s legs as he walked, rubbing the fullness of his wolf scent into Robert’s clothes. It wasn’t as strong as the smell he’d left on Wyatt and it wasn’t going to last as long, but it was decidedly more appropriate for two men that barely knew one another. Once they reached the board, Doc pushed the rabbit into his hand and then returned to doing circles around his legs while he worked.

\--

Robert could have shifted into his wolf form to eat the rabbit. It would have saved him time and it would have tasted better. Rabbit wasn’t good cooked even when he tried it by someone who _supposedly_ knew how to cook it. What little bit of worth it had as food cooked right out of it so that not even the addition of seasonings and potatoes could make the meal better than tolerable. 

Doc had finished eating over an hour ago, but he’d shown no sign of turning back to a human. Of course he hadn’t brought any clothes back with him so it was _better_ that he stay an animal. It was easier to explain a wolf than it would be to explain a naked Doc Holliday laying out in a sunny patch of his yard. The wolf just looked like a dog, alternating between snoozing and chasing flying bugs and rolling in the grass. (All worthwhile pastimes. Robert could not judge him on that account.)

The smell of the finished meal must have caught Doc’s attention because he trotted in through the still open door of the house with his nose pointed skyward, scenting the air as he went. It had gotten dim enough outside that Robert had lit the lantern in the house so he could sit at the table to eat like a proper human. 

Robert had no more than sat down before Doc kicked the door shut with his whole body as he shuddered in place, shifting from shaggy wolf to fully naked and vaguely shaggy human. “What the hell are you doing?” Robert demanded.

“I could ask you the same question. I brought you a fat rabbit which required considerable effort on my part,” he touched his own naked chest as he said it, drawing attention to the full length of his naked body, “and you have _ruined_ it. Had I realized what you were in here doing, I might have made some effort to stop you before you embarrassed us both.” He had the gall to step forward toward the table with his body bending forward so he could sniff the air with his human nose as he grimaced at the very sight.

“Does it matter how I choose to eat my food?”

“When you do it wrong.”

Robert sighed. He couldn’t look at Doc without seeing _everything_. How long and lean his limbs were, how flat his waist was. How the veins stuck out under his perfect, taut skin. He couldn’t glance without seeing how thick and corded the muscles of his arms and back were. How his every move made his belly muscles flinch and move. No, looking at Doc was a _bad_ idea because one of them needed to remember regardless of superficial attraction, what they were facing meant _forever_. 

“Why don’t you have another chair?” Doc asked.

“I live alone.”

The man didn’t even have the decency to seem troubled by his state of nudity. He wasn’t bothered about being looked at. He didn’t seem to believe there was any reason in even trying to cover himself. No he poked around the things on Robert’s meager shelves next to the stove and looked down at his sad but sufficient bed, and then back over at him, “where does Wyatt sit?”

“On my cock, usually,” Robert said. 

Doc’s immediate, instinctual response was a snarling growl. A sound better suited to an animal’s throat but still registered as fearsome even in his human voice. His body tensed then, his hands flexed at his sides like he was reaching for a weapon that wasn’t strapped to his waist. All the humor in his face was gone in an instant, like he’d been struck by something that got stuck in his skin. Even when he breathed it seemed to shudder in and out of his lungs.

It had been a crude comment to start with, but it was _mean_ at best to taunt the man. Robert sighed, “that’s the need to bond.”

“It is _exceedingly_ unpleasant,” Doc said. The anger didn’t fade out of his limbs, but he closed his eyes as he shifted back from man to wolf. All that fury and hardly-restrained need bled out of his muscles when he was a wolf. He invited himself onto Robert’s bed and tucked his face under one of the pillows and went still.

\--&\--

Everything about Robert was easier to tolerate as a wolf. From his painfully inadequate attempts at cooking, to his smell, to the dubious quality of his company. 

Doc had been prepared to be put out of Robert’s one-room homestead as soon as the sun sank so low they could no longer pretend that it wasn’t night but the man had only stood indecisively by the door like he could barely make up his own mind. In the end he’d said, “you should stay here. You’ll probably sleep better.”

That had felt like an insult coming from a man who had already decided that Doc was going to attack him without warning, but Doc _did_ sleep better. The fact that he slept _at all_ was an improvement on his recent circumstances. Never mind how long he’d slept, or how soundly. He wasn’t even sleeping on the bed, but in the corner of the room where the smell of Wyatt was smallest and the smell of Robert was strongest. 

In fact, he slept so well that he barely woke up in time to watch Robert fixing his saddle on his sad faced mare. They were not, by any definition of the word, a couple or even a pair of people that had the desire to become a couple. They were strangers that found themselves put into a ridiculous situation that only one of them seemed to fully understand. Even so, it felt like simple etiquette would have required Robert to wake a wolf up to announce his departure before he left. 

“We’re going to need more food if you’re planning on staying here.” (Doc had not planned on staying but he couldn’t deny that he felt better here than he had felt in town.) “Is it too much to hope that you might have established a reason for why you are no longer at your home in town?”

Doc was new to communicating with just his ears and tail so he was only hoping that his disbelief and annoyance was correctly communicated with his flattened ears. He hadn’t taken any initiative to explain his so-called disappearance because he had not ever announced his intentions before. Perhaps he had answered to his wife on occasion and when it was important he shared his plans with Wyatt. But Doc did not owe anyone else even a passing explanation for anything that he did. That was a lot to communicate without words, but the general idea of it seemed to get through.

Robert scoffed at him. “Stay out of the forest. We’re the only wolves here and they will shoot you if they catch you out there.”

Funny how Robert almost managed to make that sound like he would be upset to find Doc’s unattractively skinny hide hanging on some hunter’s rack. He finished fiddling with the saddle long enough to turn and look at him. His indecision was as fragrant as a bouquet of wildflowers. 

“If you’re going to stay here, we should go and get your things. There’s no reason to pay for a room you aren’t using. And,” his mouth flattened as his hands made a rolling motion that seemed to indicate nothing at all, “it’s safer for everyone if you’re closer to me and farther from them.”

Perhaps Robert meant that to be an invitation but it sounded, much like most of his attempts to talk, like an insult to his character. Robert had a manner of looking at him, and a tone to his voice, that indicated he was speaking to a feral animal. Maybe Doc wasn’t as in control as he usually preferred to be, but he was still the same man.

He’d faced up against demons (like addictions) a lot more inviting than Robert fucking Svane and managed to walk away. 

“I’m being practical,” Robert said like that made it _better_. “You don’t want to hurt--”

Doc snarled at him and Robert barely managed to look annoyed by it. Here was a man who wasn’t afraid of him at all, telling him that he was a monster, looking barely bothered by the fact except that they had to be sure the humans didn’t find out. Well, Doc didn’t have time to sit still and be insulted so he trotted around Robert and his worried-faced mare. 

“Stay out of the forest!” Robert shouted at him as he took off running.

\--

There might not have been a word to adequately sum up how Doc felt. Everything had been fine when he was a wolf; the only annoyance he’d felt was the taste of the dirty bag hanging out of his mouth. But his human skin felt like it had been rubbed raw. Everywhere on his body from the palms of his hands to the skin on his back was irritated to the point of pain.

When he’d left his room yesterday he had left his boots behind because they were awkwardly oversized to fit into the bag he was going to have to carry in his mouth. Even just the clothes in the bag had been bad enough to carry as it swung against his wolf body. He hadn’t thought about anything beyond the _need_ to find where Robert lived. 

It had made sense to him yesterday, suffocating on the stench of his and Wyatt’s sex, that his wolf form was better suited. His only thoughts had been how far away from town he would need to walk to be able to change. He hadn’t wasted a single moment worrying about whether or not someone might think it was strange to see him walking without shoes.

Doc hadn’t even taken his guns.

That must have been what Robert kept trying to say to him, in between his implied insults, that Doc wasn’t _thinking_ properly. 

Hell, he hadn’t even closed the door to his room after he walked in. He hadn’t done much more than come to a stop just inside, caught up on that stench of Wyatt’s sweat like an echo of his not-quite-pleased cries. Doc was trying to grasp onto some shame that he’d used his friend so roughly and the best he could manage was a residual sense of pride.

Doc was _proud_ of how he’d smothered that smell of Robert with his own. He’d reclaimed something that belonged to him. (But he hadn’t, regardless of how many times he’d fucked Wyatt, taken possession of the thing he really, truly wanted.) 

Standing in this room was filling him up with something _awful_. Every breath he dragged in through his nose was a confirmation of Robert’s worries. If he stayed much longer, he was going to hunt the man down just to drag him back here to find out if they could produce a stink great enough to cover the one already here.

His hands were shaking as he fixed his guns around his waist. His body was flushed under his clothes. He was suddenly starving to get his hands on (Robert) someone. That ache was set so deep beneath the surface of his skin it seemed to be screaming from the marrow of his bones.

\--

Doc was breathing through his mouth because Robert’s smell was just about everywhere in town. Whatever business he’d gotten up to must have taken him from one end to the other because just about the only place his smell was _not_ was the whorehouse. That place smelled like lukewarm sex even when it was closed and that smell was seductive to him under normal circumstances. Under present circumstances, it might as well have been a cluster of shapely sirens singing to him from the balcony.

He was putting so much effort into not smelling anything as he made his way toward the end of town that brought him closest to Robert’s homestead, that he hadn’t even noticed how close he was to Wyatt until he walked past the man.

Now perhaps it was how Doc was having trouble staying fully upright in his usual manner of walking. Perhaps it was how he was breathing through his mouth. Perhaps it was how that sensation of having his skin roughly scrubbed with a pinecone was starting to make him hiss little noises across his overly wet tongue. There were any number of reasons why he might have drawn the attention of a concerned friend.

Wyatt was the sort of man that could get fucked to the point of collapse and still reach out to grab the friend that did it by the arm with a warm-and-concerned grip and the words to back it up. He said, “John Henry!”

The man must have hired a bath after their encounter because he smelled like fresh-washed clothes and soap. There wasn’t a hint of the scent that Doc had left on him, not even that linger brush of his body that built up around Wyatt from all those times Doc found excuses to put his arms around the man. 

“Now Wyatt,” he said because there were hands on his arm and an immediate, terrible instinct to pin the man to the nearest wall. “Is all this really necessary?” 

Wyatt’s hand barely loosened from where it had grabbed him by the upper arm. His other hand was resting against Doc’s chest where it had to feel his jumping heart thumping so wildly. Robert was out at his homestead worrying about _appearances_ like any human in the world had any notion of what was _normal_. Wyatt was touching his face in the middle of the street with no indication that maybe he should have been more reserved because that was who he _was_. 

No man that preferred breathing was going to accuse Wyatt Earp of being anything but a great man.

“Are you unwell?” Wyatt asked, “you don’t look good. Come on, we should get you back to your room.”

That was the very last place that Doc wanted to go. Although, heading back in that direction was going to take them past the bordello again. He could vent some of his aggravation in the whorehouse and the ladies that worked there would be _grateful_ for worthwhile attention. Of course, if Wyatt didn’t stop pressing his hand against Doc’s body, he wasn’t going to make it anywhere but two steps to the left. It wouldn’t take more than two to get Wyatt’s back against a building. 

“I am just fine,” Doc snapped at him. Maybe that would have been more believable if he hadn’t turned his body into Wyatt’s. If he had said it with any authority instead of a noticeable depth to his voice. That was the kind of voice you used when you were telling someone to take their clothes off. 

Wyatt _knew_ that (now) and he dropped his hand off Doc’s chest as he smiled squeamishly back at him. “If you’re sure…”

It wasn’t fair to be so angry at Wyatt when he _had_ a reason to be skeptical about Doc’s self control. But the way he stuttered back a step was an echo of Robert’s worry and it felt like an _insult_ that shot through his whole body. (Never mind that commentary on his lack of self control; the fact that Wyatt had washed himself clean of Doc was _enough_ to piss him off.) Doc’s hand clenched on Wyatt’s arm, above his wrist and below his elbow. His fingertips dug deep enough into the meat that it was going to leave _bruises_. 

“Wyatt!” sounded more like panic than friendship, but it didn’t matter what emotion Robert was _trying_ to convey when the only thing that Wyatt could understand was that he’d been _rescued_. Robert was burdened with bundles, but he hurried over with what passed for a smile when you had a branch up your ass. “I was hoping to run into you while I was in town.” He glanced at Doc like they were strangers, his voice was a warning coated in an attempt at contempt. “Doc. Always nice to see you.”

“Robert,” Wyatt said with genuine warmth. “I was just, trying to help Doc back to his room. He looks unwell to me. Perhaps you could…?” (Because Wyatt didn’t want to go within a hundred yards of a private room with Doc.) 

Robert’s smile didn’t falter, “oh sure. I just have to get these packages to my horse. Do you need to lean on me?”

“I can walk,” Doc said. All on his own. 

Wyatt was already halfway into his escape but he did manage to say, “take care of yourself, Doc. I’ll check in on you.”

No he wouldn’t. At least he wouldn’t do so any time soon. You couldn’t fault a man for self-preservation. 

As soon as he was gone, Robert was sighing through his nose muttering, “I told you.”

“Shut up,” Doc hissed back.

\--&\--

The longer they walked together, the less pained Doc’s steps became. He was almost back to standing fully upright by the time they got to Robert’s horse. There was a pinch of something deeply unpleasant caught in the center of his face. His hands had been kept by his side but that did nothing at all to stop the sensation that the only thing he wanted was to get his hands on Robert.

Hell, the only thing he _did_ want was to get his hands on Robert. There had been a wolf like Doc back in the territory that bit his mate in the main clearing in full view of families with children. They’d started fucking right there; as if even the minimal decency that wolf culture demanded was asking too much. 

Doc stood three feet to the side while Robert loaded his parcels onto his horse. He pulled out a cigarillo and lit it like his hands were shivering. His whole face was flushed and his scent was being overtaken by overheated blood. Animals only had that smell when they were falling into rut. It was ripe as moose mating season this close to Doc, and _still_ he cleared his throat to say, “did you finish up all your _shopping_?”

That was a stupid question to ask. 

“You should have told me you were coming to town. If I haven’t made it completely clear to you, it will only continue to get less safe for you to be anywhere.” Robert pulled the reins free from the hitching post so he could lead his horse beside him as he started walking. 

“You told me to stay out of the forest.” Doc was wearing his boots, at least, and his _guns_. He looked almost normal, lazily strolling next to him.

“I didn’t tell you to come here.”

“Even if you had, I am not obligated to obey you.” (No, of course he wasn’t. Wolves like Doc liked to be the one to give the orders, after all.) “Regardless of the situation in which we find ourselves, you and I are not married. Nor are you my mother. Therefore, you have no right or ability to issue commands of any kind. And I am free to continue to do what I wish.” 

That was a lot of bullshit to come out of one man’s mouth. Rather than address any of it, he said, “what were you saying to Wyatt? He ran away like you threatened to cut his cock off.”

Doc snorted, but he didn’t offer an explanation. 

\--

They had barely made it outside of town, hardly far enough for it to be considered _safe_ when Doc started pulling off his clothes. He had his vest unbuttoned with one hand before Robert even had time to register that he _really_ meant to strip his clothes off. 

“You cannot do that here,” Robert had snapped at him, “what if someone sees you.” 

Doc was shrugging his coat and vest off one shoulder after the other, looking at him with the sort of defiance that could make _anyone_ daydream about biting a man’s throat out. He was smirking at Robert as he tossed his coat at him. 

It would have served the bastard right if Robert had just not caught it, but reflex was hard to fight. “ _Doc_ ,” Robert hissed. He threw the clothes over the saddle and stepped forward to grab Doc’s hand before he could get any more of his buttons undone. 

Doc’s skin was like a fire. As soon as Robert’s hand grabbed his, he was growling in his chest. His white teeth were barely visible through his parted lips, but his face flushed pink. That growing growl made itself into rumbling words, “You are going to let me go now.”

Robert let him go because the words were a warning, not a command. Standing two feet to the side, watching Doc strip naked and turn into a wolf was _nerve-wracking_ but it wouldn’t have been any better to be attacked by the man because his self-control had worn too thin.

Maybe it was inevitable that Doc was going to take what he needed; Robert _knew_ that but he was hoping to have a little bit more of a say in the proceeding than being thrown into the dirt by the side of the road. 

“Make sure you fold the clothes,” Doc said as he held out his gun belt. He was stripped down to his pants with the suspenders hanging from the unbuttoned waist. He didn’t push them off or pull his feet out of his boots but shift just like that into a wolf.

Robert sighed as he laid the holster over his own shoulder. He crouched down to help yank the pants off Doc’s wolf body. Doc licked his face with gratitude and shook out his fur in the next moment. He stayed around only long enough to be sure his belongings were treated how he wanted before he took off running toward the homestead.

“Right,” Robert muttered to nobody. Although now that he didn’t have to keep pace with anyone else he could get _on_ the damn horse. “I can’t tell _you_ what to do. But, that doesn’t go both ways? I guess I’ll just be your obedient little bitch then.”

\--

Doc was already lounging in the yard by the time Robert got back to his home. He didn’t do more than lift his head to watch Robert carrying the parcels into the house and then go back to snoozing in the sun as if there were any good excuse for Robert suddenly having a pet wolf. 

What could he even say to explain the unnaturally tall wolf sleeping in his yard? Oh, he just comes around sometimes? His name’s Hank and he likes to sun himself by the horse trough? 

“I stopped by the butcher, bought those ribs like you left in the forest.”

Doc jerked upright from where he’d been sleeping. He was on his feet in a series of barely-coordinated jerks and padding over to where Robert was indecisively stuck at the edge of his porch. They were just looking at one another, trading nothing but blank stares. Back in the territory, Robert could have had a conversation with any wolf in the pack, just by looking at them. Doc was a blank space, made up of nothing but implied questions and no answers at all. 

“I assume you just want them raw?” 

Doc’s bark seemed to say _of course_ and even if it didn’t the mad swishing of his tail certainly did. He followed after Robert as he went inside to retrieve the ribs, followed him back outside to the shady grass around the side of the house and sat politely waiting for the paper to be unwrapped. His shaggy tail kept wagging as he sniffed the offering and his tongue was long-and-eager, licking the pooled blood off the surface of the meat. But he didn’t help himself to the feast.

No, Doc stepped over the unwrapped meat and knocked his head against Robert’s legs. He knocked the full weight of his body against him. He did a circle and tipped his head to pull on Robert’s vest with his teeth.

“Don’t rip my clothes,” he shoved Doc’s head back, “I don’t want to shift, you can eat without me.”

Doc growled at him, all annoyance and no anger, but he sank his teeth into the meat and dragged it far enough away that his point had been made. He even took the precaution of making sure when he laid down his whole back was to Robert. 

“One of us needs to be a person,” Robert said to his back. “What if someone comes by the house?”

Doc flipped his tail so even it was tucked behind his curved body. You didn’t need to be an expert in individual language to understand when you were being told to go to hell. 

\--&\--

Robert spent the remainder of his day caught up in shades of anger ranging from mild annoyance to outright fury. It felt like, if they were capable of having a conversation that didn’t end with the other man telling Doc how he was as unstable as a stick of old dynamite, they might be the only two people in the world that understood what they were feeling. Doc could damn sure sympathize with a man who was trapped in a situation that he didn’t want to be in. He understood that anger that crept out of the back of your mind and overtook every single inch of your body. 

Here he was with a wolf body, curled into a ball on meek-and-mild-mannered Robert Svane’s packed-dirt porch. Doc would have preferred to be spending his days doubling his fortune at a poker table filled up with men with easy tells and too much money. He had daydreams of flirtatious women and free drinks. He could imagine the whole course of his life had it not been unceremoniously altered.

It was evening (and another uninspiring overcooked meal) before Robert finally got around to coming out of his meager little home with Doc’s bunched up pants clenched into his fist. He threw them at Doc as he said, “We need to talk.”

A less forgiving man might have simply gotten up and walked away. All of Doc’s thoughtful invitations had been rudely rebuffed, but Robert (bristling with anger even now) could show up to demand a conversation with no expectation that he be denied. Doc wasn’t shifting back into his human body to give the impression that he _cared_ what Robert wanted, but he did want a smoke. 

It was just a coincidence of timing. 

Robert had been such a convincing wimp that watching him stand there with his shoulders bunched up and his teeth clenched was a genuine surprise. Even his scent shifted far from the humans that might have been rightfully afraid of him. Here he was, opening his mouth to say something stupid, finally acting like a proper wolf. 

“No,” Doc said as he slipped one of the suspenders over his shoulders. “Not yet. I need a cigarillo.”

“Those smell.”

Doc smiled and it must not have been a reassuring sort of look. His tongue ran across his lips, catching at the too-long tips of his mustache as it went. He said, “that’s the idea. The more it smells like them, the less it smells like you.”

Robert needed to figure out how he felt about things because he was sneering at Doc’s face as he flooded the area around them with a warm-and-inviting scent. Regardless of what the man said he _wanted_ , there was at least some part of him that was fully willing to play the answering part to what Doc’s instincts were demanding. 

“It has become obvious to me that neither of us are excited about our circumstances,” Robert was practically shouting every word from that midway place where he’d stopped. Maybe he thought Doc was the only werewolf in the world without exemplary hearing or maybe he was just _nervous_ but either way, he was just _loud_. 

Doc leaned against the rough door frame as he lit his cigarillo. He took a drag off before he cleared his throat to say, “I did not realize I was being so transparent in my feelings. I feel positively mortified.”

“Regardless of how we feel, this is going to end the same way.”

“Wyatt _must_ have approached you. If this is your attempt at seduction, I cannot _imagine_ how awkward your attempts to insinuate yourself into a man’s wallet must be. Not that I judge you, I understand that all men have different talents and it is those God-given talents that allow us to get by.”

“I am not attempting to seduce you,” Robert growled at him. He was wearing far too many human clothes to look like anything but a man but his voice was thick enough you could almost hear the animal he really was. “I’m saying, what’s happening to you isn’t going to stop. I don’t know how you’re holding it back but I _do_ know that you can’t do it forever. I don’t want this and it seems obvious you don’t either but the _only_ choice we have is how it happens.”

“If we are stating our preferences…”

Robert stepped forward with his hands out like he was going to grab a man and only _just_ barely managed to keep himself from doing it. (What a shame that was.) Instead his palms lingered in the air over Doc’s shoulders as his fingers shaped themselves around the idea of Doc’s skin. His head was tipped just enough to show his pulse jumping on his throat. “ _You_ ,” he said with great emphasis, “are _very_ infuriating.”

That was just dirty pool, getting so close that not even the thick smoke trapped between them was enough to drown out the smell of Robert’s body. You might as well have thrown a fully cooked steak in front of a starving man and asked him not to eat it. Doc’s body was thrumming with a need that came from the deepest pit of his body. “Am I?” He said, “I’ve always been told I’m _charming_.”

Robert leaned back again. “Maybe that only applies to people that aren’t about to lose half their soul to you.”

“If it were up to me, you could keep your soul to yourself. I don’t go in for all that,” he drew a nonsense circle in the air, “spiritual stuff. If a god exists, he obviously does not have any love for me. Seems like a waste of a man’s time to go around wondering what happens after he dies. Not that I can, apparently, die.”

“You can die, it’s just very hard to kill you.” Robert sighed and took another step back. He was leaning against the sad post that held up the roof of his shitty little porch. His arms were crossed over his chest and he was looking at Doc’s body like a man assessing his options. “The full moon is in five days. If you can hold out that long, I propose we plan to complete the bond then.”

Doc had once rowed a man into the middle of the lake with the intent of dropping him and the anchor he was tied to over the side. Both he and the man he was paid to dispose of were aware of his intentions and good old Auggie had _still_ managed to hold a conversation with him that was less overtly insulting to his character. If anyone had any right to be bitter about Doc’s lack of perfect morality, it was surely the innocent man that was being condemned to a soggy death and not Robert fucking Svane.

“No thank you,” Doc said. He dropped what remained of his cigarillo on the ground and used the ball of his foot to crush it fully. 

“You can’t say no!”

Doc was very certain he just had. 

“Even if you wanted to say no,” Robert said like he was going to start in on how Doc was out of control all over again. His mouth was forming around those very words, his whole body was quivering on the edge of saying them, and just when they were about to spew out of his throat like so much fetid vomit, he just _stopped_. He dropped his arms back at his sides; he breathed out through his nose. 

For a beat, it was perfectly quiet between them.

And then, Robert crossed his arms over his chest with his hips jutted in such a way that there was no mistaking that Doc was meant to notice. “Fine,” Robert said, “then I suppose if we are not meant to become mates, you’ll understand why I don’t want you sleeping in my house.”

“If you are afraid for your virtue…”

Robert’s smile was calling him an idiot far more effectively than any words he could have managed. He tipped forward away from the pole and crossed the short space so he was sliding past Doc on his way inside before he paused. “I don’t have virtue, Doc. That’s something you should know about me. Sleep well,” he said right before he shut the door so hard it knocked Doc forward a step. 


	5. Chapter 5

Robert had not expected Doc to _stay_ outside, but he was not disappointed that he had. He was, in the quiet of his own house where he’d never have to admit it to anyone else, _impressed_ that Doc had the restraint to manage it. It must have been a side-effect of being raised as a human. The whole lot seemed to be preoccupied with showing how great they were at desiring something (like sex, violence, the ecstatic freedom of lawlessness) and choosing not to indulge. They’d created entire religions around the idea that you were destined for heaven if you could go the longest without giving into the basic drives you were born with. 

Doc might have been able to hold out indefinitely against the seering instinct to claim Robert as his. The thought should have brought him some sense of _comfort_ , but it just left him feeling almost sick to his stomach. Doc wasn’t mortal anymore, the instinct driving him wasn’t a matter of _want_. 

Nobody knew what would happen to him if he kept resisting the inevitable, not even Robert.

Still, Doc had taken his exile from Robert’s house a step farther. He had not only stayed outside, but had disappeared from anywhere nearby the house. He was still somewhere on the property, because the smell of him was thick enough that Robert could catch it with just his human nose. 

Wherever Doc was, he could stay there until he stopped being unnecessary antagonistic. Robert didn’t owe him anything. In fact, offering himself to be bitten had been more than any wolf in his position had ever done. (Not that it mattered, he was led to believe once the bite took place, you weren’t even upset to have given up your soul. The few mated wolves he’d talked to had said it felt very much like a broken bone being put right. All your pain and worry just disappeared and everything was made _right_.

Even so, Robert would prefer not to be violently mauled by a sex-crazed monster attempting to steal half his soul. He didn’t think his expectations of privacy and control were asking too much but apparently _Doc_ did.

So he could pout wherever he was, as long as he wanted.

\--

People liked to say that Wyatt had a nose like a bloodhound and anything he set himself to find, he could find. What they meant was that Wyatt was good at hunting down criminals that he intended to shoot. What they didn’t realize was that it wasn’t a supernatural ability to hunt a man down that brought Wyatt to those criminal’s doorsteps. It was his relentless bad luck that delivered him at the worst possible place and time. 

How else could one explain how Wyatt had found himself intimately involved with two werewolves? Wolves, by their very nature, were territorial. There were few places less safe to be than stuck between them.

But even that was safer than Wyatt showing up _now_. The man rode up to the house with the same confidence that had brought him to Robert any number of the times he had come before. A generic, all-purpose invitation had been extended at the start of their liaison because Robert found it _tedious_ to go through the motions of dealing with human hang-ups over sex. It was easier to make it known that he was almost always available when the mood struck.

If that made him pitiful and oversexed, Wyatt didn’t seem to mind.

Still, the man couldn’t _stay_. “Wyatt,” Robert said as warmly as he could manage. He was listening for the sound of Doc’s return with far more attention than he was looking at his guest.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Wyatt said before he got off the horse.

“Not at all.”

“Forgive me for asking, but Doc is not...around?”

Oh he was around somewhere. Probably running as fast as his four legs could carry him. Intent on driving off the unwanted intruder onto his land. “No,” Robert said, “was he coming as well?”

Wyatt had the unique ability to know more things than he was aware he knew. Even now, his ability to give Robert a look that called him a liar implied that he’d figured out more than he did. Because some part of Wyatt had developed an almost perfect survival instinct while all the human bits covered it up with nonsense explanations. “Forgive me, I don’t know what I was thinking. He wasn’t in his room in town. But--it’s John Henry, he could be anywhere.”

Or he could be trotting across the field from the far edge of the property. He could be licking his chops like he was salivating over his meal plan.

“How can I help you, Wyatt?”

Wyatt got off the _horse_. He made a lazy show of guiding his horse over to the fenced off field where Robert’s mare was lazily nibbling at grass. He even sighed dramatically to himself as he worked out how he wanted to proceed with what he meant to say. That faint odor of expectation was starting to ooze out of his skin.

There was simply no way Wyatt could _want_ to have sex again after Doc. He should have been scared off the whole idea for at least a month. 

“I’ve come to talk about a grave matter, I’m afraid. And something that is timely and pressing.”

Doc’s trot picked up speed as Wyatt shifted on his feet like he planned on getting any closer to Robert. There was no contest about which of them was going to get to Robert first, because Doc was moving so fast he barely slowed down again in time to keep from crashing into Robert with enough force to throw him off his feet. Even so, he knocked into Robert with enough force to make him stumble. His body was slim and compact under his thick dark fur but it was still bigger than any wolf normally found around these parts. 

“Robert!” Wyatt shouted. 

“Oh it’s nothing,” Robert ran his fingers through Doc’s fur as a show of friendliness. But the wolf wound around his legs so he could stare hatefully at Wyatt. “Just a mutt that comes around sometimes. He’s just looking for yesterday’s bones.”

“That’s a wolf.” 

“I don’t think it is.”

Wyatt could not more plainly consider him an idiot than he did in that moment. Robert didn’t care what impression he was giving off as long as Wyatt stayed at least five feet away from him. Even now, the man was watching Doc like he was a _threat_ that could be dealt with when he should have been getting back on the _horse_ and leaving. “I came to talk to you about Purgatory. You see,” Wyatt was saying all this to _Doc_ , “I’ve received several letters about the Sheriff there. Men are saying he’s a demon.”

Well, Purgatory smelled like hell itself had opened a seam beneath the ground. It certainly made sense if something like a demon crawled out and set up shop. 

“Wyatt I am always available to help you in any manner I am capable. I do not know how much use I’ll be against a man who appears to be a demon, but I will do my best.” 

Doc twisted his body so his shoulder was shoving Robert a step back. His long, wet tongue lapped at the tips of Robert’s fingers because they’d been gesturing in a friendly manner. Robert could have stood his ground, but the odds that Doc would have started growling seemed high. So he moved when he was pushed.

“Good, good,” Wyatt said with a friendly smile. He pulled his hat off in a manner most often associated with him inviting himself inside. “I’ll send a message when I’ve put together my plan so we can discuss it more thoroughly.”

Doc stopped shoving Robert backward just so he could circle his body and shove his way between Robert’s thighs. He could not have more _obviously_ declared Robert’s body to belong to him if he’d turned back into a man and said the words out loud. Even that involved less teeth.

“That’s a wolf, Robert,” Wyatt said.

“A dog.”

Wyatt’s smile was less flirty and more _pained_. “I did have another matter to discuss. It’s somewhat personal. Perhaps even a bit awkward to speak about, but I have come to believe that it would be...beneficial to share my experiences with you if my present hunch is correct.”

Robert was going to fall over because there was a wolf between his legs that couldn’t stop moving. Every motion Wyatt made, Doc followed the sway of his body, so that they were practically dancing together. He looked like an idiot, stepping backward with bowlegs until he was free of Doc. “If you think it’s important,” Robert said.

“It might be embarrassing.”

Oh, it was definitely going to be embarrassing for someone.

“I have reason to believe that Doc was upset to find out about the nature of our relationship.”

Robert had reason to believe that Doc was an absolute asshole because there was no other reason why he would have nipped at the soft, sensitive skin at the back of Robert’s thighs. There was no reason at all to rub his face along the outside of Robert’s legs. No reason to let his mouth hang open so his hot breath was millimeters from Robert’s cock. If all of his breath was thick enough to be felt through his clothes that meant every one of his meat-tearing teeth was right there too. 

“I thought we agreed we didn’t have a relationship,” Robert said.

Wyatt’s smile was pinched. Pained. The sort of smile men got when they’d demanded something and then had it given to them. “No, we do not. We have an arrangement.” That allowed them to have sex whenever Wyatt felt like it. “Doc has always been exceptionally intuitive, and I believe he was able to correctly surmise that you and our arrangement is of a sexual nature.”

“Should I leave?” Robert shoved Doc’s face away from his crotch but that just made him whine a noise like a bitchy threat and turn his face right _back_.

“No,” Wyatt said. “No, Doc wouldn’t endanger anyone over something like that. But--he wasn’t _happy_ when he found out.” 

That felt like an understatement.

“Wyatt,” Robert said with a reasonable amount of concern, “did he threaten you? I do not know the man very well, but I would have a word with him--” 

Wyatt didn’t laugh at him, but Doc groaned open-mouthed against his legs like he’d never been more embarrassed in his life. No, Wyatt was _touched_ that Robert was willing to go off and commit suicide to protect him, “no, nothing like that. I will just say,” (that they fucked), “I am no longer certain that Doc’s anger was because he was harboring any desire for me. I believe it is more likely that it was jealousy informing his actions and as a friend,” Wyatt was not Robert’s friend, but that was not the point, “it would be unfair of me not to give you some warning.”

“Are you saying Doc wants to have sex with me?”

Doc barked at him and Wyatt jumped. His hand was halfway to his gun, so Robert slid around Doc’s outraged face so he was standing between them again. 

“Well, yes,” Wyatt said mostly to the wolf behind Robert. “If that was it I would not have felt so beholden to warn you of his intentions. You are a grown man and capable of making your own choices,” but all the same Wyatt would prefer if Robert did not sleep with Doc, “however Doc appears to have a…” 

Tail? Furry Ears? A torn soul filled with cruelty? 

“I assure you, whatever it is you are trying to say that I will not be offended. We can speak freely with one another.” After all, you earned the right to forfeit embarrassment once you’d happily bent over for a man. 

“It’s just Doc appears to be insatiable and his preferences are almost unnatural.”

“Unnatural?” Robert prompted. He might not have drawn the conversation a single moment longer if not for how Doc was trying to shove his head into the space between Robert’s thighs again. He’d managed it the first time out of surprise, but Robert knew what he was doing this time. “Because he prefers men and women?”

“No. No! He,” painted Wyatt like a blank canvas and must have been so earnest about it that just the memory was making Wyatt’s face turn red as cherries. “He has an extraordinary amount of cum and he...rubs it everywhere.”

Right. “Oh,” Robert said, “I don’t believe that I would be interested in Doc even if you hadn’t warned me, Wyatt. He has never been kind to me. Even while you were gone, he seemed to delight in humiliating me.”

Just like right now.

Wyatt smiled like the sun rising over the horizon. His whole body relaxed like he wasn’t in even _more_ danger from the wolf winding back around to stand in front of Robert. “Doc can be difficult, but he is a deeply loyal friend.”

Right now, Doc would rip Wyatt’s dick off without a second thought. He wouldn’t even feel bad about it.

“I’m sure,” Robert said, “well, I need to find the bones so this mutt can eat. Wyatt, it is always a pleasure to see you.”

“Yes,” Wyatt agreed. “I’ll send that message. I hope to ride for Purgatory very soon, so be prepared.”

As soon as Wyatt’s back was turn, Robert punched Doc in his stupid wolf head. It wasn’t hard enough to entice him to any sort of payback but it was a sharp enough strike that it conveyed his anger. “Would you stop,” he hissed at the wolf.

Doc sneezed and followed that up with a growl that was interrupted with another sneeze. 

\--&\--

Robert seemed to be disturbed by Doc’s naked body. He shouldn’t presume it was only his naked body that aggravated Robert. For all he knew, all naked bodies could be considered equally objectionable to him. Perhaps dear Wyatt wasn’t permitted to remove his clothing when he came for a sexual visit. As soon as he turned back from smiling after Wyatt’s departing horse like a wife waving her husband off and saw Doc standing from four feet to two, his fake smile turned sharp and severe at the corners. “You can’t stand there like that.”

Doc sneezed, for what was hopefully the last time, before he stepped over to the only chair on the porch and lowered himself gingerly into the seat. He watched Robert’s face go through a series of emotions as Doc carefully crossed his legs at the knee. “Is this better?”

No. It most definitely was not. “I hope you get a splinter in your ass,” Robert said, “what if Wyatt turns around? What if he suddenly remembers something else he needs to warn me about?”

If they were going to put bets on who was faster, Wyatt on a horse or Doc shifting into a wolf, they were going to need an impartial judge. Hell, for that matter, even if Wyatt galloped back into view right this moment he still wouldn’t be surprised to find Doc there. He might be slightly disappointed but he wouldn’t be amazed in the slightest.

“Wyatt isn’t going to turn around. You didn’t give him what he wanted and he is not the sort of man to ask twice. Although,” Doc wished he had a cigarillo on hand, “I confess myself to be somewhat surprised about Wyatt’s preferences. Perhaps I have been reading too many newspapers but I confess I did not expect to find my dear friend had such an affinity for--”

“Stop.” Robert sighed six feet away from him, looking more annoyed the longer he was forced to stand there and look at Doc’s naked body. As if someone was forcing Robert to rake his eyes over him from his shoulders down to his knees. “I don’t know how that surprises you. I knew it as soon as I saw him. You, I can’t figure out. Wyatt was easy.”

“Well, my tastes are _unnatural_.” 

Robert snorted at that. “Your taste in meat, maybe. If you’re aiming to woo a wolf where I’m from, you don’t show up with rabbits. A pup can catch a rabbit, and they’re not happy about it either.”

That would have been a fair criticism if Robert had ever offered him anything in return. (He had left a blanket, but that now seemed more like an apology than an offering.) Perhaps it wouldn’t have felt so mean-spirited if Doc had any _notion_ of what was or was not considered acceptable and preferable to other wolves. “I am _terribly_ sorry for my poor offerings, I could not help but notice that despite being detestable to the more discerning and educated wolf, you did _eat_ them.”

“I thought you were a dentist.” It was such a knee-jerk reaction that Robert could _not_ have put a single second of thought into it before he was saying it. “That strikes me as a job requiring some level of education.”

Doc stood up again. His patience wasn’t strong enough to put up with being misinterpreted at the moment. The smell of Wyatt’s pathetic lust was still an unpleasant mist in the air. It highlighted the familiarity of that smell where it had been soaked into parts of Robert’s little home. Rather than sticking around to argue the point he nodded his head, “I am certainly the more educated _human_.” 

He shifted back into a wolf so as not to keep offending Robert with the sight of his naked skin. 

“Doc,” Robert said like he was _sorry_ , but Doc wasn’t interested in hearing any sort of apologies at the moment.

\--

Doc had not been hiding, he had been putting _distance_ between him and the man that he wanted to commit various acts of violence and sexual perversion upon. It didn’t matter how obnoxious and rude Robert was, Doc couldn’t shake the desire to rip his clothes off. His imagination was not even slightly hindered by the fact that he had never seen the other man without clothing. It just filled in the gaps with things that Doc wanted to see. 

Like Robert’s ridiculous mouth, spilling out an endless litany of moans instead of it’s usual garbage.

Robert interrupted his attempts to (sulk) by rudely shouting into the mouth of the den. It had been a poor idea to come _here_ when it was obvious that Robert had discovered or made this little home himself. Of course he knew where it was. “I know you’re in there.”

It was not as if Doc was attempting to hide in such a way he could not be found. It wouldn’t have done him any good to try when he was up against a wolf who was apparently trained to be an elite hunter. 

“I should not have insulted your rabbits,” Robert said. It was a funny way to almost apologize without meaning a single word of it. He was acknowledging that it had been a rude thing to do but not that he didn’t mean it. “Come out of there. We aren’t going to figure this out if we can’t talk.”

Just if they kept rebuffing friendly advances and making every prospect of making the best of a bad situation sound like hell itself. Doc didn’t pick himself off the blanket in the den because Robert was _right_ but because he couldn’t effectively communicate his distaste without being able to make eye contact. 

Robert was sitting on a tree root at the mouth of the den, dressed down in the least amount of clothes a man could wear without being considered naked. He hadn’t even brought a hat with him, so his normally well-hidden hair was ruffled from being pulled on. 

For a moment, Doc couldn’t work out what his first impulse was. Because half of him wanted to lunge at Robert with his wolf body just to get his mouth on some stretch of his skin. Maybe the thin skin of his throat where the shirt he was wearing had been unbuttoned. Maybe his bare forearms. And he wanted to shift back into his human form so he could drag Robert into the dirt and finish the job of stripping him down to nothing but skin. He wanted to get his mouth on him in every way you could. 

Rather than giving in to those impulses, he sat down as far away as he could get. If that was just a matter of a few feet, well he did _try_. 

Now that Robert was being looked at, he did manage to appear _sheepish_. That wasn’t the same as being apologetic but it was enough to count for trying. “We _obviously_ come from very different backgrounds. The fact is, we’re fluent in different languages. I know everything about being a wolf and just enough about being a human to get by. You know everything about being a human and what you’ve taught yourself about being a wolf. Maybe this thing that’s going to happen can be useful in its own way.” 

Robert was _nervous_ and that was a brand new sight to see. 

“I can show you how to hunt something better than rabbits. There’s deer at the northern end of the forest. We should be able to easily hunt one.”

Doc would have liked to communicate a cool sense of ‘don’t do me any favors’ but his tail was thumping so eagerly against the forest floor that it betrayed him. Rather than attempting to pretend like he didn’t understand why his tail was wagging so enthusiastically, he got back up onto all his feet to bark at Robert. Hurry up, he meant to say, but what with his inability to effectively communicate with other wolves, he might have been saying anything.

Robert shook his head like he was _embarrassed_ but he reached down to undo his shoes so he could pull them off. He pulled the shirt off next and tucked both down into the slope of the den where they’d be safe from anyone walking by. His naked chest was not at all like Doc might have expected (shapeless, uninteresting). The prominent collarbone alone demanded further attention, and Doc spent a solid minute doing nothing but imagining what it would feel like when he pressed his mouth against it. How he could nip fresh little red marks like signing his name right along the line of it. 

Robert had his pants half the way off before Doc could catch up with the fall of the fabric. He was still daydreaming about pressing his palms into the firmness of Robert’s chest and raking his nails down the man’s back. He didn’t even have time to develop ideas about anything lower than his belly button before Robert was shifting into a wolf.

Oh, and he was distractingly beautiful as a wolf. Made up of massive shoulders and speckled fur. He was a masterpiece of an animal (or maybe that was the urge to bond, as Robert called it). Either way, Robert knocked his face against Doc’s and brushed their bodies together as he walked past. He waited a breath for Doc to turn around so they were facing the same way before he took off running.

And that giddy, happy thrill that surged through his whole body was so powerful it almost left him breathless. He barked because he couldn’t get his legs working at first, and then he darted forward to follow.

\--&\--

Doc’s reputation was ruthless. He was well known for possessing all manner of proficiencies usually found in the sort of man that would commonly be found in men being hung by the neck until dead. Even the rumors about him that did not end in outright murder or mayhem were long, dirty whispers about appetite and excess. They called him everything you could call a man but good. 

People talked about Doc’s greed. They talked about his selfishness. They ruminated on his lack of character.

Not a single rumor had ever been spoken about his kindness. Robert was loathed to call it that, but there was no other word that was so accurate. Doc had taken to the hunt with vigor and without arrogance. He had not bullied Robert into allowing him to lead, but followed after him and done (more or less) what he was told. They’d taken a deer, and any other wolf of Doc’s type would have demanded access to the best bits first. 

Any man of Doc’s supposed disposition would have done the same.

But Doc had only sat and waited and _whined_ when Robert hadn’t moved to eat his fill. Even now, when they were both pleasantly full, any other wolf determined to claim a mate would have been making a show of vitality and masculinity. In some misguided attempt to prove how great they would be to make a family with, they would have shown off all their worst qualities.

Arrogance and aggression were favorites of young wolves determined to be thought of as the leaders of their year. It was what he expected from a man who was known best for his ability to shoot so accurately. Men spoke of Doc with fear and pride in their voice, like they were in awe of how terrifying he was to them. 

Probably, none of them had ever watched Doc rolling himself in a patch of sweet smelling grass, yowling long nonsense sounds as he did. They hadn’t seen him with odd little yellow flowers and grass bits stuck in his fur, or how his tongue was hanging out of his mouth like an idiot. 

No they’d never seen that sort of smile that made a wolf’s eyes bright as his tail swished just enough you could see it because he couldn’t control how much he enjoyed what he was looking at. That was the most telling thing about Doc, he had _no_ control over what his wolf body was saying. He’d never been taught to control it because there’d never been a reason for him to need to. 

Robert walked over to join him in the sunny grass because he was warm and well-fed. He remembered how nice it felt to curl up with a packmate after a large meal, to snooze wherever you wanted and know the safety and comfort of closeness. He _remembered_ that but Doc had never had it. 

Robert hadn’t slept right since he walked out of the pack territory; he couldn’t imagine how _tired_ Doc must be. How absolutely exhausted he was by the longing for something he couldn’t get from the humans no matter how hard he tried. Robert licked his face where there were still streaks of blood and hooked a leg over his neck to pull him down so they were both lying in the grass. He rested his face on Doc’s ribs and sighed like a yawn. 

Doc _whined_ and Robert licked his ear.

This is what wolves did. Friends, family, lovers, it didn’t matter to other wolves. You gathered together for warmth, comfort and rest. 

\--

They did not rest for very long, not nearly as long as Robert would have preferred. They did not gently wake to a late afternoon of cool air and long shadows. No, Doc rolled so violently back and then up onto his feet that he knocked Robert completely over onto his side. Even if that wasn’t enough of a rude shock, Doc finished his panicked escape by shifting back into his human form before he sat back on his ass to look at him with an expression most closely identified as horror.

“What _exactly_ are you doing to me!” Doc shouted at him. His whole face was flushed pink as he pushed his hair behind his ears, “last night I am not fit to be your--what did you call me? Your mate. You keep telling me that I am unholy, a _creature_ that will devour your soul and therefore I assume your free will, and then…” he stuttered on that word like his heart was beating so fast it was knocking the air out of his chest. He motioned at the space where they had been laying together so recently like he couldn’t find a word to describe it.

Mother _had_ to be laughing herself sick. She had romantic notions about being claimed by a wolf like Doc. She told the stories like they were epic romances, about finding the one best suited for you without ever having to go looking. Robert had watched the swelling numbers of immortal wolves claim their mates without a single moment of pause or regret. He’d watched wolves be taken from their families, from their lovers, from their homes without any warning. 

Maybe it was only a few, maybe it wasn’t how it was meant to be. Maybe the ideas that had perverted the creation of unholy wolves into something that was _owed_ to every wolf had wriggled through into the idea of soul mates. 

Doc’s every instinct had to be screaming to take what he wanted, and there he sat, in a state of _despair_ because he wouldn’t.

Robert shifted back to his human body so he was sitting on his knees with his hands resting on his thighs. “Well, why would I want a man who brought me _rabbits_?”

For a moment, Doc was _outraged_ , but it broke through him like a laugh. His smile was disbelief and _relief_. “Why would I want a man that’s so hard to please?”

Robert scoffed.

“Please, enlighten me as to the selection of meats that you would find worthy of such a fine creature as yourself? I would hate to keep embarrassing myself in such a manner.” The humor was easier to manage than fear. They’d been skating by on half-said things and sarcasm, keeping away from anything that was too ugly and too real. Even now, Doc scratched his fingers through his hair as he ran his tongue across his lips. He wasn’t looking at Robert but at his own hands. 

“It doesn’t take away my free will,” Robert said. He shifted so he was sitting with his legs crossed in front of him. “I’ve heard it makes us more likely to forgive one another. We want to be together; we _have_ to be near one another. Near means different things to different wolves, some can venture to opposite ends of the territory, some can’t leave their homes without the other. You won’t be able to make me obey you.”

Doc nodded and just a bit of that tension released out of his bunched shoulders. He picked at the grass next to his knees as he tried very hard to look at Robert’s face (and failed, but he _tried_ ). “How am I meant to bite you?”

“With your teeth.”

“ _Robert_.”

“You bite me when we’re both humans. We have sex to consummate the bond. We are bound for eternity.” It was such a simple way of explaining an idea so big. “It’s four days until the full moon.”

Doc was having long, slow, _deep_ thoughts about Robert’s body. If the way he’s hand had moved to cover his dick was any indication of the thoroughness of those thoughts, they must have been decidedly delicious. Even his voice had gone all thick and suggestive as he said, “careful, Robert, it almost sounds like you’re about to propose.”

No. The proposing had been done for them by a series of bad jokes fate had played on them. Robert cleared his throat, “I already proposed once, you turned me down.”

“Well,” Doc said as he finally dragged his stare back up to Robert’s face. “That was before I had the opportunity to see you naked.”

Robert glanced down at his own body. He let his thumb run across his skin from the dip at the center of his collarbone down, moving so slowly that Doc all but stopped breathing. It wasn’t _nice_ to test his restraint like that, but Robert said, “that’s the human in you. All human men are so easily distracted by skin. You couldn’t imagine how many naked bodies I’ve seen in my life.” 

“I’ve seen a fair share myself,” Doc whispered.

They were fresh out of good ideas, out here in the forest, but at _least_ it felt almost like this had been their own idea. At least Robert felt like he had a real, _proper_ choice. At least Doc was nothing at all like the thing he’d run away from. Even now, with his cheeks turning so rosy with blush and the smell of his arousal so thick it was becoming a taste in the air, he wasn’t even _trying_ to get his hands on Robert.

No, Doc was as surprised as anyone when Robert rocked up onto his knees again. He was startled and _scared_ with one of his hands out in front of his body, the tips of his fingers just barely brushing against Robert’s shoulder to hold him off. “Please don’t do this if you aren’t sure.”

“You’ve been looking at me,” Robert said as he crept forward another few precious inches. He folded one hand over Doc’s shoulder and slid the other up the back of his neck to thread through his sweat-damp hair. He slid himself onto Doc’s lap. “I’ve been looking at you.”

Doc was beautiful with his eyes closed, with his face pressed against Robert’s body, the point of his nose slanted into the base of his throat as his open mouth pressed wet and _hot_ against his skin. His hands were spread fingers and running up the length of his back. “The things I want to do to you…”

They couldn’t do a fraction of the things that Doc had to want from him, not out here. Robert pushed his hand down between their bodies, where just the air caught between them was overheated. Doc gasped when Robert closed his hand around his cock. He was leaking already, pulsing little globs out of anticipation even before Robert did anything but curl his fingers around the shape of his dick. 

“How about this,” Robert asked as Doc’s fingernails broke the skin of his back. As Doc’s mouth opened around his skin and the threat of his teeth pressed into the meat of his chest. “We take care of this first one here, and we go back to the house for the next one?”

Doc hadn’t shown it (yet) but he was stronger than the average wolf. All that quivering strength was trapped in his long-lean muscles. It moved them both as Doc rocked up into Robert’s hand, as his arms tightened around Robert’s back. Robert wasn’t small and he wasn’t _light_ and he was being moved effortlessly by the quick and mindless thrust of Doc’s hips. 

\--&\--

Of all the things about Robert that had surprised him, what Doc was least prepared for had to be the man’s _mouth_. It was an annoyance in everyday conversations, always spouting off nonsense that was borderline insulting. It was distracting when things got quiet, and all of Doc’s thoughts were steam and sex. 

But right here, just inside Robert’s rickety front door, with his back pressed into the wood and Robert’s tongue pushed into his mouth. This was the thing he expected least of all. If he’d been forced to guess just a day or so ago how sex might have gone between the two of them, he might have guessed at something lackluster. He would have thought Robert would _endure_ being touched and if he had kissed Doc it would have had that flavor of obligation to it.

Certainly, Doc couldn’t have expected how Robert’s fingernails would have raked down his chest from the round of his shoulders to the flat of his waist. He couldn’t have guessed how close to breaking the skin those scratches would get. How eagerly Robert would hum his approval. 

How Robert’s voice got deeper with his cock pressed against Doc’s skin, “how do you want me, Henry?”

That was a funny thing to ask when Robert hadn’t stopped pushing him around since he invited himself into Doc’s lap. The question felt like it was just for show, because Robert was going to get exactly what he wanted regardless of what Doc said. 

(Oh hell, somehow that confidence and the unforgiving grip on his hip bone shouldn’t have been _hot_ , but the room was _boiling_.)

One of them had to be capable of _thinking_ and there was no reason it shouldn’t have been Robert. Doc arched away from the wall with no idea at all what he wanted because he wanted it _all_. He wanted Robert in every possible position and interpretation of the word. He managed to gasp, “bed.”

Robert’s laugh was deep, and promising, and his red-red lips were gleaming wet. His fingers scratched through Doc’s hair as he pulled his head back. “Good start,” Robert whispered, “are you going to let me pick? I haven’t been fucked in years. I hardly remember what it feels like. Is that what you want, Henry? You want to fuck me?”

Oh God, “yes.”

Robert kissed him again and Doc pushed them toward the bed.

\--

“Oh,” Robert gasped the way a man might when he’d discovered he stepped in horseshit. It wasn’t a sound that you wanted to hear from the man you were fucking, but it was _fair_ when it had been an orgasm and a half since either one of them were really putting any effort into the affair. Robert was on his back because they’d been at this longer than any mortal body could withstand. His elbows were denting the sorry mattress under his back as he tried to look like he wasn’t _actually_ trying to to escape. “I thought Wyatt was _exaggerating_.”

No. 

Doc’s whole body was vibrating beneath his skin. His every thought was swirling around the idea that he was _so close_ to something that would finally, finally feel like it used to. Sure he’d had orgasm, he’d soaked Robert inside and out with the proof of it. But they were nothing more than the faint taste of something delicious you’d licked out of the corner of your mouth. He was _starving_ for a full meal, for something truly satisfying. 

(He was daydreaming about the way skin must feel when it split under the pressure of your teeth.)

“Wyatt didn’t make this long,” Doc said. He shifted back so he wasn’t in Robert anymore, and the man flinched at the feeling. He didn’t stop Doc from dropping low enough to lay against his body, but he did let out a breath like he’d been holding it for hours. His body was exhausted and overheated beneath Doc. “Sorry.”

“I guess this explains the whorehouse,” Robert whispered, “are you always like this?”

No, this was the worst it had ever been. Any man that prayed to be tirelessly virile had obviously never experienced how terrible such a gift could be. “Not usually,” Doc whispered, “just since I smelled you in the forest.”

“Shit.” 

Doc shifted his weight so he could roll off Robert. His skin was raw and red-tinged, tingling everywhere all at once. He was _exhausted_ from the effort, and the orgasms, and the utter lack of satisfaction. It made him feel bruised from his neck to his knees. “Perhaps it will return to normal after we are mates.”

“Yeah,” Robert said with no amount of hope at all. He let his legs straighten for the first time in hours and touched the _puddle_ of cum on his belly before sighing. “It was good before it went on too long.”

Doc snorted. 

“Although. Once we are properly mated, and you’ve satisfied your primal urge for dominance, I get to fuck you.” He didn’t even make it a question. He didn’t have to. All that meekness he presented as his human face was a crafty lie. Even now, fucked to the point of exhaustion and thoroughly coated in cum, he tipped his head to look at Doc with no expectation that he would be challenged. “Unless you object?”

“I never object to a good idea,” Doc said. 

Robert hummed his approval and rolled away from him toward the edge of the bed. As soon as he got to his feet he growled a noise of disgust and outrage. “Fuck,” he mumbled under his breath, “nobody has this much cum.” He made it a few steps before he snarled again, “it’s _everywhere._ ”


	6. Chapter 6

Despite going through the trouble of heating enough water to scrub his skin _and_ rinse it, Robert couldn’t get the _smell_ of Doc off his skin. A certain amount of lingering smell was expected but even to his human nose this was like an overzealous application of a perfume. Other humans might not understand what they were smelling, but anything with a single ounce of instinct was going to keep a wide empty space between him and themselves.

Doc hadn’t looked at him for longer than a span of seconds ever since they _finally_ stopped having sex. (Not that Robert wanted to apply a name of something he loved to the embarrassing affair of the night before.) Neither one of them knew what to do about _that_ , but it hadn’t stopped Doc from curling up in a wolf ball next to him on the bed. He had fallen asleep long before Robert, and he’d slept _soundly_ without waking, without whimpering, without a single dream.

Instinct was a real bitch of a thing, and everything in Doc’s body had to be telling him to make sure the world around them knew who Robert belonged to. There were a few ways to accomplish that feat, but none of them so effective as smothering a man with your scent.

Knowing that Robert was a two-legged advertisement for Doc’s amazing and unbelievable ability to produce _lakes_ worth of cum was _soothing_ to Doc and that was best for everyone. Certainly it made the world safer for anyone that accidentally got too close to Robert. He couldn’t be _angry_ about how he smelled when he had initiated and _invited_. 

However, Robert did not want to smell like congealed semen.

He was working on finding something strong enough to cover it up, (thinking fondly of skunks), when Doc snorted awake over on the bed. He lifted his wolf head with a gaping yawn and lapped at his muzzle before he looked over at him. 

Robert’s spices and herbs were a sorry collection. He could make himself smell like a fragrant dish of gravy but that didn’t seem like it would be a worthwhile improvement. Humans might not have a strong enough sense of smell to know _what_ they were sniffing when they got close to Robert right _now_. But if he rubbed himself down with dinner herbs, they would. 

Doc sat up on the bed, shifting out of his furry body to his human skin, so that he could stretch his legs over the edge of the mattress. He grabbed what was leftover of yesterday’s cigarillo off the shelf by the bed as he watched Robert. “What are you doing?”

Robert was standing by his stove wearing nothing but his pants. He was contemplating the worth of running the smell off. Perhaps he could find a corpse in the forest and roll his body into that until the smell of death permeated his fur and sank into his flesh. 

Doc hadn’t lit the cigarillo yet. He was holding it between his thumb and forefinger as he just _looked_ at Robert. That struck-dumb stare was as heavy right now as it had been the night before. All the shame and embarrassment of getting hot and bothered was absent, so Doc didn’t seem to care about how his dick was getting hard. 

“I’m trying to get your smell _off_ ,” Robert said before any of them got any ideas.

“That is a very bad idea, Robert. I am very fond of the way you smell at the moment and I cannot help but think,” his voice was starting to roll with a growl, “I would be very unhappy if that smell went away.”

“Heaven forbid you be unhappy,” Robert snapped at him.

Doc just scoffed at that. He leaned over to drop the cigarillo and match back on the shelf. “Just come over here and let me suck your cock, we’ll both feel better.”

None of those words were the response he expected, so that Robert could not figure out how he was meant to respond. That must have been why when he started saying anything it came out like a burp of fury confused by the sound of itself, “fine, if that’s what you want.”

Doc was smiling as he settled on his knees by the bed. “If you do not want…”

“Shut up,” Robert whispered to him.

\--

Doc seemed to be of the mind that he had accomplished the only thing that would need to be done for the rest of the day. At least, he shifted back to a wolf as soon as he finished his foul-smelling cigarillo and went out into the yard where the sun was warmest and just laid there.

He hadn’t done more than lazily snap in the direction of a butterfly for the better part of an hour. Even the butterfly hadn’t been intimidated by the attempt.

Robert wasn’t angry that Doc was relaxed (if anything, it was an _improvement_ ) but it felt like there were plenty of things they _should_ be talking about. They had an entire life they had to figure out and the farthest they’d even started to address was the next three days. Neither of them had any idea how the bite was going to change their life. They could be the sort of mates that couldn’t separate, they could be the sort that could live in different towns. 

They needed to have an _idea_ of what they were going to do regardless of the consequences, of how they were going to _live_. (Of whether or not sex with Doc would always be a sticky, wet marathon. Although his cock-sucking was superb, it did not make a man forget that he smelled like a cum puddle.) 

But Robert was leaning back in his chair on the porch, thinking of things he should be doing and wasn’t, watching Doc snoozing in the long grass. He was thinking about the worth of a good nap in the grass and the likelihood that someone would come looking for them today. 

His answer came running into the yard, smelling unwashed and underfed, shouting: “Sir!” 

Doc jerked his head up at the sound but he’d been scenting the air since the first long strands of Dowdy’s scent had started blowing in on the wind. 

The boy looked exactly like he smelled: dressed in the sort of clothes you’d find in the trash, with hair so long and ragged it seemed like the last time it had been properly maintained was when some angry schoolteacher was cutting it off with a knife. He didn’t wear shoes and he was so covered in dust there was no chance he’d ever even heard of soap much less been given the opportunity to have a bath. 

Robert abandoned his happy daydreams of napping in the sunshine. He got to his feet to meet the kid before he got too far into the yard.

“It is you, sir! Well, I got the directions from Wyatt Earp himself, along with a few coins,” Dowdy thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a sorry number of coins, “He doesn’t pay as well you, sir. But, any job that pays is a good job to have. I thought that it would be so easy to find the house. Only I don’t know if he didn’t pay attention to all the other houses on the way out here because he made it sound like yours was the only house in these parts, and I already knocked on the Miller’s and the Townsend’s doors and let me tell you they did not like that.”

Imagine Wyatt not seeing anything standing between him and his next chance to get dicked.

“Dowdy,” Robert said, “what did Wyatt need?” 

Doc was moving in the yard, rolling up onto his belly so he could more closely watch and listen. 

Dowdy snapped his mouth shut so he could draw in a breath, “Mr. Earp would like you to meet him in town, he said that you could meet at his office but I don’t know what he means by that because I’ve never heard of Wyatt Earp having an office in town. I know he rented that whole house at the end of main and that’s good for--is that a wolf?”

“No, Dowdy!”

But the boy didn’t have a single ounce of common sense in his entire body. His very skeleton seemed to be made out of impulse. He darted around Robert before he could be stopped and was halfway across the distance in a breath.

Common sense must have been where fear started, because Dowdy was a fearless idiot, throwing himself at Doc like any real wolf wouldn’t immediately attack when struck with the full weight of a bony child. There was no telling in the first second if Doc was going to attack or not. He’d gotten up to his feet when Dowdy started running at him, but now that the boy had crashed into his body with both arms around his neck, Doc was just standing there.

Doc was looking at him with his mouth partially open, like he was working out if he ought to growl like any wolf would or let the boy hug him.

“I’ve always wanted to pet a wolf,” Dowdy breathed into his fur, “I’ve always wanted to pet a _dog_. Madam lets me sleep on the doorstep sometimes but she doesn’t like pets. She shot the cat that followed me home.”

Doc tried moving forward and the kid tightened his arms and moved with him. His fingers were filthy and blunt-tipped, scratching through his fur at the back of his neck. He wasn’t even talking anymore, just pressing his face against the wolf’s neck. 

It was almost irresponsible, letting the kid hang on like he was. No other wild animal was going to have the sort of patience that Doc was displaying. Dowdy wasn’t even trying to support his own weight anymore, he was hanging off Doc’s body with no regard for the efforting holding them both up was taking. 

“Dowdy,” Robert said (at last), “you need to let him go before he bites you.”

“Oh,” Dowdy said softly. He sank back onto his knees with the greatest reluctance. “Right.” Even then his fingers stretched back up to comb through Doc’s hair where it was fringed around his shoulders.

“Was there anything else? Wyatt just said he wanted to meet?” Robert prompted.

“Yeah,” Dowdy agreed, “he said that if you have any idea where Doc is to tell him to come too. Nobody’s seen Doc Holliday in days, not since he was arrested.” His hand dropped into his lap and he sat there on his knees staring at Doc (who was trying not to look back at him too obviously) with whole-body loneliness.

Doc must have seen it too. That was another thing all those rumors about the cold-hearted person John Henry could be had gotten wrong. No man that killed without remorse, no _creature_ without a soul would have looked at this skinny, unhappy little child and felt _anything_ but annoyance. Doc turned his head to look at the kid and then knocked his shoulder into the boy like an invitation. 

He moved a half-step when Dowdy’s whole face brightened up into a smile. The boy was back to scratching Doc behind the ears in a second.

“I guess he likes me!” Dowdy said, “I always knew that I would be good with animals. I even buried my cat, you know. Madam said that we could eat it but it wasn’t the kind of thing that you should eat. She told me that I couldn’t go getting sentimental but…”

Doc leaned into Dowdy so heavily that the kid fell over and that must have been his plan because he laid on the kid’s lap where the boy could scratch his ears without hanging off his neck. 

Whatever Doc _was_ , he wasn’t a monster.

Robert sighed, “fine, you can stay here for a few minutes but you’re going back to town with me when I go.”

\--&\--

The smelly little orphan had wrapped both arms around his body and laid across his back in a complete demonstration of an utter lack of self-preservation that was downright frightening. Doc was not the sort of man that preoccupied himself with the plight of motherless children but it was hard to ignore it when one of them had his face pressed into your fur, breathing deep breaths like he was trying to memorize what the moment felt like in case it never came again.

It was safer to impress upon the child that hugging wild animals was dangerous, but it was _crueler_ too. That must have been the reason Doc let it go on so long. Must have been why he was just vaguely disappointed when Robert came back, looking annoyed to find them where he’d left them, leading his tired looking mare behind him. 

“Come on, Dowdy. Can you ride?”

“A horse?” Dowdy asked and then immediately answered, “I never have before but I’ve always wanted to.” He let go of Doc only because he was being presented with another opportunity (which must have been part of Robert’s thinking) but he stood a few feet from the mare with a distrustful sort of fidget in his body. “How do you get on it? I’ve seen the men in town and they make it look so easy.”

“Come on,” Robert grabbed the boy under the arms and lifted him like he was nothing but a pillow stuffed with goosefeathers. The boy shrieked as he was hoisted onto the horse and the mare didn’t seem to _care_. (Of course she was calm enough to be owned by a wolf so nothing much at all probably bothered her.) “Just hold on here,” Robert said and he didn’t move until the boy did what he was told. 

Maybe it might have seemed odd if Dowdy’s entire attention hadn’t been absorbed by hanging onto the horse, how Robert turned to look at the wolf. “We’ll go back into town so I can see Wyatt and tell him I don’t know where Doc is.”

That seemed very much like Robert was attempting to tell him that he should not come into town. If Doc had been better educated in the language of wolves, he could have more accurate conveyed that going into town to see Wyatt _alone_ was as stupid an idea as letting Doc follow.

If Robert was of the mindset that seeing the man in private was somehow safer for all involved, he _obviously_ misunderstood the nature of the burning hunger that was consuming Doc’s body. All the same, Robert nodded to himself like they all agreed and turned back toward his horse.

“Sure, sure, Mr. Svane,” Dowdy said from the saddle. “Sure.”

\--

The trouble was that Robert was not wrong that town was not a place that Doc should be. And if he had to be here, he surely should not be here as a man. Even now, with human skin, the smell of so many people moving from one place to another, the great stink of human worries was making his stomach twist up into a knot that was growing bigger and bigger beneath his skin. It was fit to break through his skin _long_ before he got close enough to Wyatt’s home to catch the scent of the man. 

It had always been the sort of smell that he considered _comforting_. The man had been the closest thing he had a pack for as long as he cared to remember. Wyatt was good for anything you needed from him, and he never asked too many questions (because then he couldn’t deny what he already knew). But just now, thinking how far away he was from Robert, the stink of Wyatt’s house was like lighting his blood on fire. 

Everything human in him was whispering soothing reminders to the blood-thirsty ravenous beast clawing to be free. Things like how men couldn’t go off turning into animals between one home and the next. Things about how Wyatt had been a good friend and it wasn’t his fault. Things about how Robert wasn’t going to touch anyone else because he _knew_ now. 

But the reminders were running together, getting mixed up and caught together, churning out worries about what Robert might do if he thought nobody was looking. How he’d covered up the smell of who he was so long and how he hated the smell of Doc lingering on his skin now. How eagerly he’d--

“What are you doing here?” Robert hissed at him. He had only managed to get so close without being noticed through virtue of the raging storm of misfiring impulses filling up Doc’s body. It was a mistake for Robert to get so close, to crowd toward him with his meek little fingers anxiously dancing along the brim of his hat held by his chest. The closeness was a greater taunt than the wind-blown scent of Wyatt’s house. 

Robert had smelled like hot skin, and sex, and _Doc_ before they left the homestead. Now he had the stink of an unwashed orphan, old leather saddles and a well-exercised horse. He was surrounded by so many humans, all of them filling up the air with the collective odor of their sweat and shit and piss. Doc couldn’t stop himself from coiling a hand into Robert’s jacket and pulling him forward with such force it almost lifted both his feet off the ground. He dragged them both around the corner of a building, and slapped Robert against it so hard it made the wood shudder.

“ _Henry_ ,” Robert snapped at him with both hands shoving at his shoulders and his whole body arching off the wall. His teeth were clenched so hard it changed the shape of his jaw. He was _stronger_ than he’d been acting. His fingers were digging so hard into Doc’s skin they were leaving bruises patterned with the bends of his fingers. 

Doc didn’t let him go because he was being pushed. He let him go because he should not have grabbed him. He _knew_ that but it didn’t matter half as much in that moment as it should have. No, even as his hands dropped off Robert’s body, his every impulse was to strip him to the skin just to make sure nobody else had touched him.

That sort of possessiveness was selfish and _ugly_. 

Robert tugged his vest down. His face was bristled up with anger, turned bright pink from the exertion. He bent to pick up his hat and hissed, “you shouldn’t have come,” at him like that helped either of them.

“Neither should you,” Doc snapped back. 

“If I hadn’t come, Wyatt would have come back to the homestead to find out why I didn’t. As _much fun_ as it was the last time he was there, that wouldn’t have done either of us any good.” He dusted his hat off as he frowned down at it, “if you go with me to Wyatt’s he’s going to _know_.”

Doc snorted at that. It bubbled up from the bottom of his gut as a laugh so mean it tasted sour on his tongue. “You cannot be so naive as to believe that Wyatt does not already _know_. Oh, he has made up his mind about you and myself, friend. And I know our friend _far_ better than you do. If you walk into his home without me, he will assume he has a _chance_ to recover you from me.”

“I’m not a stolen item; I can’t be recovered.”

“You are something he bought and paid for, Robert. That’s exactly how he sees it.”

Robert wasn’t looking at him. He wasn’t even facing him, but staring down at the hat in his hands with his feet facing forward. His tongue was a faint pink mark on his lips, there and gone again. When he looked up, his expression was grim but his shoulders were squared up like he was headed into a fight. “I needed him to think that. This,” he motioned between them, “wasn’t supposed to happen. Men like him move on, other men replace him. Nobody gets hurt. The specifics are never discussed. If I walk into that house with you, he’s going to talk about me like a piece of property.”

Wyatt had a startling capacity to be a dick, considering he generally was a good man. In his mind, what had happened between him and Robert was a business transaction, and his money was meant to buy exclusive rights. 

Doc ran his tongue across his dry lips as he stepped close enough to turn Robert’s face back toward him. Maybe it was a bad idea, but nothing seemed as important as this one little moment right _here_. This narrow space between their faces as Doc leaned forward to press his mouth against Robert’s. There was nothing to be done about what was likely to happen as soon as they stepped foot into Wyatt’s house. 

The only choice they had was how they wanted to walk in. Robert’s hand folded over Doc’s arm and held him there for a half-breath longer. When they were relaxing back away from one another again, Robert’s smile was so soft it was heartbreaking. “It’s dangerous for you, Doc. It’ll be hell to sit in the room with Wyatt and you know it.”

Doc shrugged, “it’s not me it’s dangerous for.”

Robert rolled his eyes. “There’s no chance I can convince you not to do this?”

“See? I believe we are starting to understand one another.”

\--

Polite men may have knocked and _waited_ , but Doc had never been known for his manners. He did take the time to knock but he did not waste his time waiting for the door to be opened. If Wyatt had gone off and gotten himself in a pissy mood (and he most certainly had, since he’d been at Robert’s so recently smelling like an open invitation that hadn’t been accepted) then he would make any man wait on the stoop just to prove he could.

Oh sure, he’d be full of apologies when the door was finally opened because he was a passive-aggressive sort of man that didn’t like to be thought little of. But still, he got his point across. The world moved in accordance with Wyatt’s wishes or it waited while he took his time.

No, Doc didn’t wait, he walked right in through the door he’d been invited through so many times before. (Not this exact door, but a parade of doors that opened into whatever home Wyatt found himself occupying at the time. Always opened so eagerly to let him in.)

But Wyatt stepped out of his front parlor with a book closed around a finger and one hand pulling the glasses off his face. He wasn’t _eager_ to see him going by the slow reddening of his cheeks and the flatness of his mouth. No, his dear friend was filling up with _fire_ and _fury_ that all his suspicions had been confirmed. He barely looked at Doc a moment before looking over at Robert meekly sliding around the open door so he could close it with nothing but the tips of his fingers.

Robert was ducking his head like he really _meant_ it when he said, “I’m sorry, Wyatt. I would never presume to enter your home without waiting for an invitation.”

“Oh I believe _we_ were invited,” Doc said. He pulled his hat off and pressed it against his chest. “Or am I mistaken that you extended an invitation to the both of us?”

Wyatt had chosen to live his life ignorant of a few very important truths but there were a few things that he never failed to see. For all that he couldn’t manage to figure out Doc turned into an animal at the full moon (and really any time he wanted), he _always_ knew when he came across someone Doc was fucking. It had always felt a bit like spiteful jealousy, but just there as Wyatt leveled Robert with a glare so powerfully full of distaste that it was bridging into disgust, Doc wasn’t quite sure what motivated Wyatt. “Don’t apologize, Robert. Doc always gets what he wants regardless of the cost.”

“Wyatt,” Robert said like they were going to have a civilized conversation. He said it like he’d been practicing how to be a man so long he’d forgotten half his animal instincts. That was really a shame; that was a fucking tragedy. What Robert didn’t understand about humans was that they were just animals convincing themselves they weren’t.

Doc had been holding his hat, but then he was not, because he stepped forward and slapped Wyatt across his face. It was an insult of the highest caliber; the sort of thing no man who wanted to keep breathing would have dreamed of doing. 

And yet there they were, Wyatt with blood pooling at the curve of his mouth, bent to the side with his pretentious book on the floor and his glasses thrown across the room. There they were with Wyatt looking at him full of confusion and _hurt_. 

And in the next moment, Robert’s hand was pressed against Doc’s chest. Robert was moving him a step back and he moved because everything in his whole body was screaming, begging to be closer to him. “What the hell are you thinking?” Robert hissed at him.

Wyatt straightened as his bloody tongue ran across his lips. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe his mouth clean as he cleared his throat. “Don’t worry, Robert. Doc has always been so passionately devoted to his new lovers. It’ll pass.” Wyatt dabbed at the corners of his mouth. He seemed vicious and _pleased_ when he said, “it always does.”

Robert must have known it was pointless to try to hold him still, because his hand dropped away from Doc’s chest even before he took a step forward. Doc had his hands wrapped up in Wyatt’s clothes before he managed to snarl anything that sounded like a word. He was growling with his human throat as he slapped the man’s whole body back against the wall. 

“Henry,” Robert said from just behind his shoulder. “Let him go. You and I will leave. You’d rather leave with me, wouldn’t you?”

Just then, Doc would rather give in to that gathering sensation of fur growing through his skin. He’d rather have teeth than fists. Maybe that madness showed on his face because Wyatt was staring right into his eyes like he saw something there that was _terrifying_. 

“I wish you’d told me,” Wyatt said and there was no figuring out what he was talking about.

Robert’s hand pulled at Doc’s until he loosened his grip. He was angry and he didn’t want to give up his prey, but Robert’s touch was a promise that he wanted _more_. 

\--&\--

Doc still had not said a word. Even now, long after they’d made it back to the homestead, he was sitting in the good chair at the end of the porch, watching the horses in their pen. He was smoking like a chimney, going through every cigarillo he had brought with him from town. Even that didn’t seem to be enough to relax the tension that was keeping his jaw clenched and his eyes narrow. 

All those things they should have been talking about were still waiting to be said. Robert had been trying to figure out how he wanted them to sound ever since Doc had retrieved his horse. Before it had felt like they were playacting at something temporary. Like, there was still a chance that they might be wrong. Doc’s presence was impermanent without all of his belongings. He’d only been visiting before.

But now everything he owned from his hat to his horse were here. 

“I don’t think we should stay here,” Robert said when the quiet dragged just a bit too long. “Humans can tolerate one of us in their town, they make excuses for our strangeness but when there’s two of us? They go the other way, they start looking for excuses to kill us.”

Doc snorted at that, “people don’t need excuses to kill each other.”

“There’s a reason wolves live in packs far away from human settlements. Even when humans don’t know why, they know we’re bad to have around.”

“And where,” Doc turned to look at him as he flicked the butt of his latest cigarillo out into the grass just beyond the dirt porch, “would you suggest we go? I seem to recall you telling me that you left your home and that you did _not_ want to return to a pack?”

Robert didn’t want to be obligated to a pack; even more he did not want to end up a _mate_. If he’d known that he’d meet his mate out in the human world, maybe he wouldn’t have been so insistent with his Mother when he argued that _fate_ had nothing to do with mates. It was hard to see it any other way when he found himself at a place he couldn’t have imagined existing all those years ago. “We don’t have to join a pack. We don’t have to leave forever, we can come back if you want to.”

“If _I_ want.” Doc’s face was an echo of that snarl he’d growled into Wyatt’s face. It was the gathering darkness in the center of his face, like his body was going to change forms without waiting for the instruction. Some emotions made more sense covered in fur. “What I _want_ ,” Doc stood up in a rush of motion, rising to his feet and stepping up against Robert’s body all in one move, “is…” 

Doc’s hands were like claws, formed around the shape of Robert’s arms. It was a shiver of self-control that was keeping him from taking exactly what he couldn’t quite figure out how to say. 

“Good,” Robert said softly, “that was the next thing we needed to talk about. I think we’ve waited long enough.”

“ _Robert_ ,” Doc whispered like he was dying.

“But you should take your clothes off first.”

Robert might have been expecting some kind of protest. Maybe confused demands against being told what to do. (Wolves in Doc’s position had an illusion of importance and dominance that they violently defended.) Doc didn’t waste a half-breath arguing the point, he had one hand on his vest thumbing the buttons loose as the other hand reached up to pull his hat off and throw it onto the chair behind him. 

“You’re sure?” Doc asked.

If he hadn’t been before this moment, before watching the frantic, overly-eager, almost desperate way Doc was pulling himself free from his clothes, he was _now_. Robert smiled as he nodded before taking a step backward toward the door.

Doc followed, shrugging his vest off like it didn’t matter to him that it landed in the dirt. “Tell me what to do.”

Robert had taken the precaution of removing the outer layers of his clothes already. He’d made up his mind about how things needed to proceed back in Wyatt’s dusty foyer. Not because Doc was fully willing to eat a man that insulted him (because that kind of possession helped nobody) but because Doc _hadn’t_. Because he’d followed Robert’s scent and the touch of his skin, because he wanted Robert more than he wanted to prove that he owned him. 

“Once you bite me, we’re going to have sex. We’re probably going to have a lot of sex.”

Doc was the only wolf he’d ever seen that grimaced at those words. His distaste at the very _idea_ of it was so pronounced that it was almost funny. Or it would have been, if he hadn’t bent in half to pull his boots off in the next moment. “I can do that,” he said when he was standing again. His mouth must have been water because he kept licking his lips. “Where should I bite you?”

“Shoulder, upper arm. Somewhere I can cover with my vest or jacket.” Robert just had to shrug out of his suspenders. His shirt was old enough that with just a few buttons undone it slid over his head with ease. Doc’s hands were on his skin as soon as the shirt was off it. “Concentrate, Henry. Finish taking your clothes off.”

The only thing Doc was still wearing was his pants and that didn’t take him longer than a heartbeat to have off his body. He kissed Robert while stepping out of his pants. His mouth was so hot it was like a fire. His fingertips were cool and uncertain, not sure where they wanted to land. So they fluttered, like butterfly kisses from one place to another. Danced against his chest and fled across the planes of his body to tap against his waist and then up so they were curled lightly against the back of his arms. 

“This is important,” Robert said when Doc’s mouth moved off his. “You have to bite deep. The elders say you have to hang on until you feel it. They never described what it was, just said that you’d know, that it would feel _complete_. If you don’t get it right the first time, we have to do it again.”

Doc was kissing down his neck, following the throb of his pulse in his throat. He nodded his head in time with Robert’s words. His hand slid up Robert’s arm to grip at his shoulder, like he was holding him still. His teeth found a place they liked, just beneath the curve of his shoulder. 

Robert knew when it was coming, not from the sudden cut of the teeth in his skin, but from the grip of the hands holding him. Doc’s body was shivering in a growl he probably didn’t even know he was making. He was so hot it was like being baked alive, and just for a moment, right before his teeth broke skin, Robert had never been more afraid of anything in his whole life.

He had never been more sure, either. The pain was red and liquid. Doc’s growl was the sound of a starving animal but it turned soft and _sweet_ like a love song. It vibrated between the pair of them, resonating through the teeth cutting into Robert’s flesh and spreading out. It was breath-stealing, that moment when everything seemed to start to shift. It moved so slowly it might not have been moving at all. Something _was_ changing.

Doc’s hand moved off his arm to slide around his back; his jaw clenched and his teeth dug deeper and everything that had been _almost_ right shuddered into place at last.

Oh, and his mouth was a great red stain, bleeding down over his chin and neck. His eyes were brilliantly blue in the dimness. His smile was _relief_ (at last). “I feel it,” he said breathlessly, “did you?”

“Yes,” Robert whispered. 


	7. Chapter 7

The sheets looked like they’d butchered a live animal on them. That bite mark on Robert’s shoulder had been abused with such dedication and ferocity that it hadn’t had the chance to rest and scab over. His blood was soaked into the bed in long streaks and puddles and spots and dots. It ran down his arm and chest and up onto his neck like a blush. It hadn’t mattered to either of them the night before, and it didn’t particularly matter to Doc _now_.

He had only extracted himself from the mess because his skin was so filthy it had started to itch. If he were a more industrious man he might have hauled water into the dim and dusty interior of Robert’s little home and warmed it so they could both benefit from the use of it. It was so early in the morning, and Robert was sleeping so deeply that it seemed almost more kind not to bother. 

He bathed in the river, protected from the chill only by the virtue of his wolf skin. Everything had always been different in his wolf body but it was even more so _now_. These long weeks had felt as if he were being pulled on a rack, stretched beyond the limits of his human flesh, left starving and without rest. He had been exhausted and inexhaustible all at once. 

But here.

Right _now_ , there was such energy moving beneath his skin. He could have run without ceasing, around and around the whole of the country. The whole of the _world_ until he wore ruts along his path. He had _never_ felt the blessing of his condition with such ecstatic perfection before this moment. 

By the time he was closing the door behind him, still damp from the river water with the morning dew clinging to his hands and feet, Robert was _finally_ waking up. He rolled onto his back without a hint of embarrassment or shame. He was the centerpiece of their debauched artwork, all smooth pale skin patterned with blood and cum and little bruises the shape of fingertips. His hair was a disaster of fist shapes and pillow tangles but his smile was so soft any man might think they were properly in love.

“You left?”

Doc crawled up the length of the bed just to watch Robert watching him. “I did not see the point in disrupting your well-earned slumber.”

Robert’s hands were warmer than his skin. His fingers followed the slow roll of a bead of water from his collarbone to his belly button. Doc had stopped at Robert’s thighs, sitting back on his legs as he leaned forward on his hands. As much as they’d fucked the night before, it felt like they couldn’t _physically_ tolerate even the idea of wanting to again. 

“Well-earned?” Robert repeated with a snort. “You should have woken me up. Look at me.”

Oh, he was. 

Robert pinched his belly, “not like that.”

“If you do not want me to look at you ‘like that’ perhaps you should not be looking at me in the very same manner.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t be wet and naked.”

Doc smiled and Robert smiled back at him. There was a sensation of _rightness_ but it wasn’t what Doc had thought it would be. He wasn’t overcome with a gnawing love and a bone-deep devotion for this man. He was no more or less interested in Robert than he had been the day before. The only thing that was _different_ between them was that a sense of peace had been restored. 

There was no violence shivering just inside of Doc’s skin.

So when he sat back on his knees to give Robert the best view of his river-damp skin and how it prickled up with goosebumps in the cool air, there was humor and goodwill and flirtation. It was _easy_ to smile at how intently Robert looked at him, at how familiar his touch was. 

It didn’t hurt anymore.

“We shouldn’t,” Robert said softly, “you’re already clean.”

Doc nodded along as he walked forward on his knees, as Robert’s wandering hand finally found it’s way to his cock. “We most certainly should not,” he agreed.

But they were going to anyway.

\--

Robert’s little home suffered from a deplorable lack of furniture. Maybe the bed had been sturdy and comfortable enough for one and minimal use but now they had abused it so thoroughly that it was made of valleys and high peaks and neither were very comfortable. 

Still, he preferred the bed to the shaky chair tucked under the tiny round table. At least the bed didn’t seem like it was going to fall apart if he shifted his weight from one side to the other. He was leaning half against the headboard, stretching his legs across the rumpled sheets, taking his time about smoking his last cigarillo. 

Robert was fussing over heating water at the stove, scratching at the crusted ridges on his belly. They’d split open the wound on his shoulder again and it had oozed fresh red blood through the thick, dark scabs. The smell of his blood was hot and metal in the little room, filling up all the space that wasn’t taken up by the smoke. 

“How do you carry things when you’re a wolf?” It wasn’t the most important bit to consider about this plan of Robert’s. Doc wasn’t worried too much about the more obvious concerns. He didn’t suffer from any attachment to this place, and Wyatt was used to him wandering away without a moment’s notice. Doc could send a letter from anywhere in the country and Wyatt wouldn’t question how he’d gotten there or what he was doing. 

A little space would do them good and even that was assuming there was a friendship to be salvaged there. 

But Doc was _very_ fond of his things. He liked his guns, and he liked his hat. He liked these things that had come to define him as a person. And while teeth and claws were perfect developed hunting tools, sometimes a gun was better suited to the thing you were aiming to kill. 

“Saddle bags,” Robert said. That water on the stove must have finally gotten warm enough to use because he dipped his rag into the water and started scrubbing his stomach clean. The blood was flaking off where it had dried the thickest, leaving faint red lines behind to mark where it had been. “I’d limit what you were planning on taking because they move a lot when you’re running. After awhile you get tired of getting hit in the chest.”

Robert rinsed the rag in the bucket of cool water still sitting on the floor by his feet and dipped it into the hot water again. He didn’t even look up from the impossible undertaking to say, “I don’t feel different. They said I would like you more.”

Doc snorted, “perhaps the problem with that expectation is that you already liked me plenty before.” He stubbed out the last of the cigarillo on the wooden post of the bed and dropped the butt over the side. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so careless if they’d been planning on staying. What difference did it make now? 

“You’re different,” Robert said. He must have gotten clean enough for clothes because he was pulling those ugly plaid pants up his legs when Doc looked over at him. “Calmer. Better at sex than you were.”

That was because _sex_ was good again. “I am very happy that you are pleased with the arrangement. Although I was able to deduce your improved approval through repeated trials.” Doc stretched without any real intentions of moving off the bed or bothering to put on clothes. There was no reason to bother himself with either when there was no pressing need to do _anything_.

Robert fixed the strap of his suspenders over his good shoulder with a grimace. “You are never biting me again.”

“Not even a nibble?” Not that Doc needed to nibble on his partners or that he had ever wanted to sink his teeth so deep into their flesh he was swallowing mouthfuls of their blood. It had felt _right_ in the moment and he was far, far from displeased to see the wound on Robert’s skin now but it didn’t need repeating. 

“I’ll rip your teeth out,” Robert said. He picked up the bucket of filthy water with more force than was entirely necessary and it sloshed over the rim. The irritation that bristled through Robert’s whole body was so pronounced and so obvious that it almost left a taste in Doc’s mouth. 

He was all set to say _something_ (something smart, doubtlessly) when Robert opened the door. It was barely open a crack, just far enough to separate the edge of the wood from the edge of the frame. All the smells of the world beyond cut through the pleasant sex-and-blood stink of the interior.

Doc didn’t even have time to issue a warning before he jerked forward, going from sitting on the bed in human skin to standing on the floor with wolf paws. Robert didn’t have time to see him move, or hear him change, or _prepare himself_ before the door was fully open. 

And there, with his dirty bare feet just landing in the soft dirt outside the door was their smelly little orphan with a rushed-red face and wet-hot breath all but screaming, “sir, you’ve got to go! You’ve got to _leave_ sir. I heard them in town, sir, they’re coming to take care of you!”

\--&\--

Robert would have preferred that this was not happening. There was nothing about this moment that he liked. The smell of the house behind him so overwhelming and undeniably sexual that even this child would know _immediately_ what it was. The bucket of murky-colored water weighing down his left arm, sloshing perilously over the edge, splashing on the ground at the boy’s feet. His bare skin and the blood streaks still running down his chest and arms. 

The mouth-sized wound on his shoulder that was as obvious as it was presently painful. 

And last--and most damning--how there was no explanation for _any_ of it because John Henry Holliday had chosen that moment as the right time to shift back into a wolf. Now Robert was standing in the doorway of his house that reeked of sex, bleeding from a bite wound, with a wolf the size of a man standing just behind him. 

“I ran as fast as I could run, sir. I didn’t know what else to do because there’s nobody in town that likes you and we all know what happened at Mr. Earp’s house yesterday. Or at least everyone at Madame’s knows about. I heard all the girls talking about how they were going to pitch in a little bit and make sure they rescued Doc Holliday from the…” He had to concentrate there a moment to remember the exact phrasing, “depravity of sin into which you have seduced him. And then there was Lottie who said that it was the devil’s work! And Madame said that they didn’t have to worry about it because men like you always get what’s coming to them and--”

“Dowdy,” Robert said.

“I told them that I’d never seen you behave sinfully and they all laughed at me and I thought maybe they were just joking but then this morning, I got woke up because there a whole _assembly_ of men who said that they weren’t going to have filth like you living in their town and they knew just want to do with you and that if Wyatt Earp wasn’t man enough to do it himself that they would just have to do it this one time.” 

He must have finally found a limit to the number of words he could say without breathing because he was panting so hard his body was shaking from the effort. He ducked forward with his hands on his knees and his head hanging from his shoulders, just working on sucking air into his lungs. 

Robert stepped sideways from the doorway to throw the water out into the grass and dropped the bucket by the post supporting the roof. 

“Is that Doc Holliday’s hat?” Dowdy squealed behind him. He didn’t wait for an answer but walk right into Robert’s house to grab Henry’s hat off the table. He was holding it with the tips of his dirty fingers, tipping it one way and then the other it was a religious relic. (And hell, maybe it was for this kid, who knew?) “This is amazing! Was he here? Is he here now?” Dowdy looked up from the hat to glance around the dim interior of his house and his little smiling mouth went slack and worried.

He set the hat down again and took a step backward toward the doorway, and another, and another until he was back outside the house. He _finally_ seemed to really look at Robert, and the wolf, and then he took another step to the side so he was just a little farther from them both. “I didn’t see anything.”

There was _no_ way to know what the child was thinking at that moment. More unsettling than the things he might be thinking was how he didn’t even try to run. His self preservation had decided his best chance was ignorance, and Robert couldn’t keep himself from sighing. He pushed his tangled hair out of his face and worked on thinking up something to say that would do anything to improve the moment. 

Doc didn’t seem to suffer from the same indecision; he moved closer to Dowdy and knocked his head into the boy’s chest. He sat just there, with his tail thumping into the ground as he turned his face upward so he could lick the underside of the boy’s chin. Dowdy’s reaction was instinctual and fearless. His sullen little frown brightened at the corners and his fingers pushed through Doc’s fur to scratch his neck. 

“You should go,” Robert said. “If there’s men coming, it’s not safe for you to be here.”

“ _You_ have to _leave_ ,” Dowdy snapped back. “Those men aren’t just going to hurt you!” 

No. Those men weren’t aiming to hurt him at all. No doubt they’d packed up plenty of guns and bullets and plenty of human stupidity to see them through. Maybe they’d take their time about reaching their endgame if it suited the moment, but they were coming to kill him. Robert _should_ leave. It's what he would have done _any_ other time.

But this time, Doc was keeping himself calm and loose for the sake of the little boy with tears in his eyes. For all his body was soft, his eyes had gone cold because those stupid men in town knew just enough to feel threatened and not nearly enough to feel _terror_. If they knew what they were coming to kill; they might have thought better than to attempt it. 

Robert crouched low enough that Dowdy wasn’t craning his neck to look at him. He didn’t move any closer. He rested his hands against his own body when he said, “I’ll be fine. I need you to leave so you’ll be safe.”

Doc lifted himself up far enough to shuffle forward. As close as he was to Dowdy, the boy moved with him, turning so his back was against the wall and Doc was between him and the yard. He didn’t bark. He didn’t growl. He barely sniffed at the air but his tail stopped wagging as he stood up so Dowdy was half hidden behind him. 

“He needs to go,” Robert said to the _wolf_ who didn’t seem to understand that the majority of them were _mortal_. He sniffed the air as best he could with a human face as the sound of hoofbeats grew louder and closer. He might have at _least_ shoved Dowdy inside the house if the smell had been anyone’s but Wyatt’s. “Fuck,” he mumbled as he stood back up. And just before Wyatt was close enough to see, “ _fuck_.”

\--&\--

Doc could not help but think that this moment might have gone _better_ if only Robert hadn’t been so picky about how he cleaned himself. A wash in the river had been sufficient at getting him clean but Robert needed _warm_ water and wash rags. And he needed _clean_ water to rinse with. And apparently he needed to keep the rinse water free of conflicting bodily fluids because he’d stopped after he’d scraped the cum off his skin but all those long tentacles of dried blood were still bright as apple peels on his pale skin. 

Wyatt was half off his horse before it even came to a full stop. He pulled his hat off as he opened his mouth and the _first_ thing he said was, “we don’t have long they’re just behind me…” like he was in the middle of an explanation.

But the _second_ thing he said, just after his eyes focused on Robert’s naked chest and the great raised red crush of the wound on his shoulder was, “ _Christ_ , Robert.” He’d already taken his hat off or he might have ripped it off his head in that very moment. Instead he stared with open-mouthed horror and his voice went all high and _aghast_. He was half-staring and half peering through the open door like he’d find the perpetrator inside. “Did Doc do that?”

“It’s not important…” At least not compared to an unknown number of men on their way to kill them.

“I’d say it is.” Wyatt stepped forward and grabbed Robert’s arm with one hand to pull it out just far enough it made the man lean forward a number of degrees. The wound was worse when you looked at it from above, you could see the curve of Doc’s teeth if you looked closely enough. See how the flesh split open, and how _deep_ and how red they’d made it overnight. “This is ridiculous, Robert. This is _unacceptable_. I love Doc dearly but now you’ve got men coming to kill you and…”

“Wyatt, it’s really not what you--”

“Doc Holliday bit you?” Dowdy whispered. 

“Look at all this blood!”

“If you’d just let me explain.”

“There is no explanation for this! There is no excuse for it. Robert, I respect your decision and I am not speaking out of jealousy or--”

Doc couldn’t roll his eyes with a wolf face, but he pulled away from Dowdy far enough that when he barked it didn’t startle the kid so much. Wyatt turned to look at him with the same distrust and distaste he had the last time, like he was faced with a wild animal he thought was better off as a head mounted on a wall. 

Nothing (not even how he almost certainly already _knew_ ) could have prepared Wyatt for _seeing_ Doc shift from a wolf to a man. The shock of it was so visceral and so complete that it threw him _backward_ like he’d been kicked in the chest by a bull. He only just barely stayed on his feet by virtue of his pinwheeling arms. His breath was ragged and _wild_ and out of control, but he still managed to scream.

Dowdy’s back hit the house but he wasn’t _scared_ , only startled. His dirty round face was bright as sunshine, disfigured with a smile so big it showed every one of his teeth. He was absolutely _delighted_ , breathing out, “Doc Holliday is a wolf,” like he’d just discovered God was real.

“I was handling it,” Robert said.

“I have absolute faith in you, darling. However, Wyatt is another matter.”

“You were a wolf!” Wyatt shouted. 

There wasn’t enough time to explain anything with any detail and seeing how things couldn’t be explained well, they were just as well not explained at all. Doc retrieved his pants (if only because there was a gun fight coming) and his guns from inside the house. 

By the time he was out again, Wyatt was still standing there with one hand hovering by his mouth and the other clutching his own shirt. In another ten minutes or so, he might have returned to a state of natural awareness, but from the smell blowing in they didn’t have that sort of time left. 

“Dowdy, get in the house,” Doc said.

“Yes sir.”

Robert was frowning, “wood doesn’t stop bullets, Henry.”

Well, it was too late to run now. Wyatt had brought his shotgun along with him, in his haste to alert them of the coming danger he’d left it on the horse. He was still relearning how to make sounds with his mouth so Doc took the liberty of retrieving it for him and handed it over to Robert. 

“I don’t intend to let them start shooting first, Robert. Do you?”

“We can’t just kill these men.”

Wyatt managed to say, “A wolf! Did you know he was a wolf?” 

“I’m a wolf,” Robert said like it didn’t matter. He checked the shotgun for cartridges before snapping it closed again. “We’re fast enough we could get away before they get here. This doesn’t have to be a bloodbath.”

No, it didn’t _have_ to be. These stupid men that were getting closer-and-closer could have just left them alone. They could have minded their own business. They could have left their orphan alone. Maybe Robert’s human face hadn’t been able to catch the scent of fear lingering in Dowdy’s words. Maybe he hadn’t been paying close enough attention to the kid’s face. 

Or maybe Robert had grown up safe and loved. Maybe he didn’t know. 

“How many men are coming, Wyatt?”

“Six, seven? Doc, I can’t just let you kill these men. It would be outright murder.”

That was downright fucking hypocritical considering how many men they killed in their lives. How many men died just for having the unfortunate luck of pissing off the wrong man. Wyatt’s little revenge ride had nothing to do with the law and they both knew it. Doc had seen Wyatt in every way you could see a man. He was carrying secrets in his chest that Wyatt liked to pretend didn’t exist. But just because you closed your eyes to the ugliness didn’t mean that it didn’t exist.

“Then I consider it very fortunate that I do not require your permission. Of course, you are free to attempt to stop me if that’s your choice. I should caution you, I did just find out that I am very hard to kill.” 

\--&\--

“What does that mean?”

Robert couldn’t work out who was more annoying at the moment. Wyatt with all his refusal to accept things he’d already known or Henry for striding across the long grass toward the sound of the many horses carrying men that wanted to kill them. Wyatt’s ignorance was as grating as Henry’s arrogance but only one of those was likely to get someone killed. Robert _wasn’t_ immortal just because his mate was, he only knew enough about guns to know that he should have one with him because _everyone_ did. He understood the concept of aiming and he understood the trigger.

That didn’t mean he should be given a firearm and be asked to use it in self-defense. 

“Damn it, Henry,” Wyatt hissed behind him. He darted forward far enough to grab his horse by the reins and pull the beast out of the open space in front of the house. He couldn’t do more than that because the mob of men had _finally_ gotten close enough to see. 

They were near enough to hear their shouting over the wild beat of the horse hooves. Close enough they could see Doc Holliday waiting for them. They were driven by bloodlust and hate, the sort of thing that turned men into animals, but survival instinct was _animal_ instinct. They pulled their horses to a stop while they still had a chance at surviving.

“We’re not here for you!” was a long and winding shout into the wind. The horses were dancing in place, overheated by the urgency of their riders and frightened by the scent of the predator waiting for them. “We’ve got no problem with you!”

Robert leaned his shoulder against the corner of the house, hoping it provided him some kind of cover when the shooting started. Wyatt had taken up a place at the opposite end of the house, half behind the corner with both guns drawn but not yet lifted. They were just waiting, like the men were waiting, to see what the hell Henry was going to do next.

“You should leave while you still can!” Henry shouted back. 

His voice felt like a shiver down the back of your neck, a long cool scratch dragging the length of your spine. Everything mortal could feel it, the men, the horses, the sudden clutter of so many birds jumping out of the grass to the safety of the sky. Hell, even the earthworms wriggling through the dirt could have felt it. This wasn’t John Henry Holliday who scared some men because maybe they-could or maybe they-could-not sense that something was not-quite-right about him. No, this was a fully realized monster filled top to toes with something unholy. 

Henry was an abomination to all mortal things and a monster with a smile on his face. 

“We can’t do that, Doc!” the man at the head of the group shouted.

Robert had been watching Henry as much as he’d been watching the line of men. Somewhere between one and the other, he missed the exact moment the shot was fired. As loud as it was, he couldn’t figure out if it had come from his side or theirs and it didn’t matter a second later, because the sound of a body hitting the ground was too loud to be so far away.

Wyatt’s heart was beating so fast the smell of his blood was almost as strong as the scent of Henry’s. 

The man at the farthest end of the line dropped his rifle with the authority of an executioner. A gasp ran through the group, like a sigh of relief. 

“Wyatt,” Robert said. He ducked against the building, half turned to look back at man. 

Wyatt was crawling out away from the building, caught between the instinct to help an injured man and saving his own hide. He was far enough from safety that Robert had to drop the shotgun to grab him.

“No, that’s a bad idea.” He dragged Wyatt back and the man dug his knees and toes into the ground to shove them forward. 

His voice was an agony of fury, fear and pain. He was growling, not talking, saying: “we can’t leave him out there!”

Robert wound both arms around Wyatt’s body, one over his shoulders and the other around his chest and pulled him mercilessly backward. He was on his back in the dirt, doing his best to save the only man he _could_ so he didn’t see what was coming. 

He could hear the horses rushing forward. He could hear the men hollering in joy; smell the stench of their bodies thrumming full of violence. It split in a second, torn apart by the rising growl of something insatiably hungry. There was a roll of blood in that first growl and a splatter of bright-red bloodspots across the grass. 

The first horse screamed before Henry even rolled up onto his wolf legs. 

Wyatt didn’t need to be held back because he was scrambling on his own power, throwing himself behind the corner of the house with sheet-white terror draining all the blood out of his face. His hands were shaking for the same reason the horses were rearing back. 

For the same reason the men started shooting.

The bullets were _everywhere_ in an instant. They beat against the ground and the house and horse fence like hail. They filled up the air until it smelled like smoke and hot metal, and it did _nothing_ to save them. 

\--

Henry stopped but he wasn’t finished. Half the men were still moving, ripped open and bleeding, making some attempt to crawl to freedom. _All_ of the men were still breathing, even the ones that were drowning in blood were still saying their dying prayers like there was a God that could save them now. 

No, Henry wasn’t finished but he trotted over to Robert all the same. His face was soaked in blood, it oozed out of his mouth when he breathed, dripped in long-fat tendrils hanging onto the spaces between his teeth. He pressed the top of his head against the center of Robert’s chest, huffing a heavy breath as the blood dripping off his fur fell on Robert’s hands resting in his lap. 

“Don’t leave them like that,” Robert said and Henry turned to lap Robert’s face. It left a streak of blood-and-spit from his chin to his eyebrows. It was hot-and-coppery on his lips. 

Wyatt lifted his head long enough to scowl at them. He hadn’t moved from where his back had hit the house when the screaming started. It was a powerful thing to live through, the sound of a massacre so close to your ears that you could feel the mist of the blood on your face. Even for men like Wyatt that thought they knew something of violence and death. 

Robert shoved Henry backward away from him. “Go and finish it.”

Henry’s teeth were pink, and his growl was an echo of rage. Rage had no soul (and neither did Henry) and he considered himself _completely_ finished. Those men wriggling across the grass weren’t going to survive what was done to them and it served Henry’s purposes perfectly if they suffered before they passed.

Wyatt pushed away from the house, up to his feet and ducked down again to pick up his guns. He was still shaking when he took his first step, and his second, but he’d found something like steadiness at the third. “Not even these men deserve to die like this.”

Henry was half-way to just laying in the grass, stretched out like he’d earned a warm nap in the sun. He was making a show of rubbing his body into the grass, huffing and howling as he rolled onto his back and landed on his other side. He stayed still for a second, with his head cocked back so his nose was pointed at the house. 

The seconds dragged, the sharp sound of Wyatt’s putting the first man out of his misery echoed against the shattered wood of Robert’s house. Henry was on his feet before the echo stopped, ears back and hackles raised, growling at the holes in the house. 

“Dowdy,” Robert hissed. He’d _forgotten_. He’d been hiding around the corner the whole time, ducked against the ground until the gunfire had _finally_ stopped. All that time, and he hadn’t even _thought_ of the boy.

The door was barely still attached when he pushed it open. The air inside the house was filled with dust and a misting of blood. The chair and the table had been turned over. The boy was curled up like a kitten, hiding in the corner behind the bed. That should have been as safe as he could get but there was blood soaked through his shirt. 

He was crying in the dark, with his mouth open and his voice a hoarse, pink whisper. 

“Fuck.” Robert lifted him as softly as he could, rolled him so he was up against his chest and the boy’s bony little fists were as cold as ice against his bare skin. 

Henry was snarling at his side, bouncing after him until they were outside again. It had been too dim inside to see properly and Robert had thought (had hoped) that if he could only get enough light to see _properly_ that it wouldn’t be as bad. 

Dowdy was coated in sweat, as white as a fish-belly. He smelled like death, a great creeping stillness. The wound went through his narrow chest, just far enough away from his heart it didn’t kill him instantly, but he was drowning the same way those men in the field were. 

Henry had been a wolf when Robert laid Dowdy in the grass but he had human hands to shove Robert out of the way. He was on his knees in the dirt, nothing at all like the remorseless thing he’d been a moment ago. He was saying something, some quiet and sure, something _reassuring_. The sort of thing you said when you knew someone had minutes and you wanted them to know they weren’t alone. He peeled Dowdy’s shirt away from his skinny body and all that frantic, hopeful energy collapsed. 

There was nothing to be done but bear witness. Henry shifted back into a wolf because his body was softer and warmer so that when he laid his head over Dowdy’s chest the boy wasn’t so cold anymore. 

Robert had missed the moment it must have happened. Or he’d seen it and he hadn’t _understood_. Wolves like Henry grew families the old fashion way in the territory because there weren’t many pups in need of parents there. Maybe Henry hadn’t even known when it happened, but here they were nonetheless. 

There was no time to think; no time to figure out if it was _better_ or _worse_ to let Dowdy die a natural death or tie his soul to a monster. They barely had enough time to make a decision, much less to think about whether it was the best one. Robert was working off instinct, and the idea that if given the choice, the boy would have wanted to live. “Henry, bite him. Just, bite him like you bit me.”

No part of Dowdy was big enough for Henry’s mouth, but it didn’t matter how many of his teeth he sank into the kid’s skin, as long as the intent was there. As long as he held on long enough. The only hope they had was that Dowdy’s slowing heart could handle it.

\--&\--

Wyatt was still sitting in chair by the collapsed door to the house. As much alcohol as he had already consumed, it was probably for the best that he stayed sitting. It was as likely that he wouldn’t be able to stay standing even if he had tried. But the liquor had been calming for his nerves and it had returned a good deal of color to his pallid face.

He didn’t smell like resentment and fear anymore. No, now he had the air of a benevolent man who had tidied up his own injustices and discovered that things were not as bad as he had previously thought. 

“How long?” he asked, as he motioned at Doc’s body. If the tip of his pointed finger lingered on his shirtless chest, well that was nobody’s business but Wyatt’s. “Have you been a wolf?”

“All my life.” 

Wyatt’s head was tipped so far back it was pressed against the house behind him. He fumbled at his own face, looking for the twisted tips of his mustache and ended up just running his drunk fingers across his chin instead. “You eat people?”

“Not most people. I didn’t eat most of them,” Doc motioned over his shoulder, out at the field full of dead men left to bloat in the sun. Wyatt was going to have to head back to town sooner or later. He’d have to have a story to explain what the hell had happened here. 

“You ate some of them, some of some of them.”

“But I am still _me_ , Wyatt. The very same man today that I was yesterday that I have been as long as you and I have known one another.” 

Wyatt blinked in slow motion, like he forgot how his eyes were even meant to work. His hands fell back into his lap. His thoughts were moving at half-speed (or slower) but they still managed to churn around the most important thing he’d been wanting to ask, “but Robert doesn’t have that much cum. _Why_ do you?”

“Another time, friend.” Doc had been holding his hat in one hand, thinking about whether or not he really wanted to try to fit it inside the saddlebag with his guns and their clothes. There was no good way to carry it and he couldn’t possibly expect to wear it as a wolf anyway. He’d spent years with the hat and it felt as familiar to him as a part of his own body. But he couldn’t stay here, and he couldn’t take it with him. “Take care of this for me,” he said as he handed it to Wyatt, “I’ll be back for it sometime.”

“Will you?” Wyatt said like he’d really figured something out this time. 

Robert barked from the other side of the horse fence. With his ears back and his tail down he looked as annoyed as a wet cat. It was his own fault for insisting he was better suited to the task of teaching Dowdy how to use his wolf legs. They’d been at it for the better part of the hour and Robert had given up on following after the long-legged wolf pup as he raced the length of the fence again-and-again-and-again.

“I will. I am very fond of that particular hat.” And, “good-bye Wyatt.”

He was only wearing his human skin as far as the river and only that far so he could cross it without getting the saddle bags wet. Once they were on the opposite bank, they were three wolves disappearing into the woods headed wherever Robert decided was safest. 


End file.
